Here are some new people who you may want to start following on socialmedian. These aren't the most "popular" people on the site, but people who deserve to be more popular and followed.
@jasongoldberg Its great, But i'm already following most of them. I noticed some of them for the first time yesterday. I hope Leo spends more time time here,and Phil is great.
many of the ppl mentioned here aren't updating at all.. they are active on their blog & twitter etc. but not on S|M. So tell me again why we should follow them here?
@Adgenius whether they are active directly on socialmedian or not is fine so long as they are contributing great content that we can follow along from. @LouisGray for instance is awesome at sharing stuff from Google Reader. Ditto @robdiana. My bet is that with all these folks if a large # of people are following them on socialmedian AND engaging in constructive dialogue around the stories they contribute, that over time they'll be more and more drawn in to participate here directly too.
@jasongoldberg : I truly hope so.. because they are experts in their field and I love to hear more from them. But atm I don't find it necessary to follow them just because of the reason they are "famous", this due to a current lack of info sharing.
@jasongoldberg @adgenius there is a high percentage of folks who will sign up to check it out and not return. Happens at all Social Networks. The ones that remain are cream of the crop. You know I'll be here.
@louisgray Thanks Louis. About 30% of the people who discovered socialmedian around the time of our move from alpha to beta August 1st have remained highly active. Another 30% have been periodically active. The remaining 40% checked it out and never got into it. BUT, what we're also finding is that folks in the past 72 hours are now starting to come back to socialmedian -- that the updated feature set is more complete and compelling, and that those who are trying socialmedian again or for the first time now, are sticking with it at much higher rates. We'll continue to monitor it and keep at it...
@jasongoldberg @svartling has a good point, a lot of those people haven't made a post. On the bright side, I decided to put a little list of my own together of people you might have looked. The good news is while I was collecting the url's yesterday, I noticed a dozen socialmedian's had returned for the first time yesterday, after months away! I going to post this list!
@svartling part of the point of recommending some of these folks was to re-energize them... in some cases, like matt cooper, they are smart and intriguing people who I personally know, and who have told me they would be back ...
I like to look at lists and make my own call, tend to be selective myself as following the wrong people can make the overall experience pretty weak.
It's the same with Twitter, I am very thorough in who I actually follow myself, not just anyone. And certainly don't reciprocate when someone follows me that I have no 'subject interest in'.
Same goes for Social MEdian. Plus it takes time for people to get into a new service. I am getting more into it on a daily basis now, always check daily, it's always the first place in submitting stories, over Stumble etc.
I love it and can see myself getting very involved.
@jasongoldberg maybe you could make a page similar like http://justtweetit.com/ where S|M users can selects 1 category (i.e. social media) they are "promoting" the most.. On that page you can also find how many articles they have posted until now(+ average a day,..). This way you get a more accurate list of active users you wish to follow + categorized per topic => this instead of the "popular" list which doesn't reflect the "interest level" that much
@Jasongoldberg @imjustcreative @Adgenius Good points and ideas. Personally, I agree about being selective about who I follow and interact with. Although, I've been "giving people a try" lately and then remove 'em from my list if their interests don't really match mine, or if they don't add much value. I always enjoy humor and relevant info, news, etc. I'm getting a bit worn from purely-partisan-political noise lately though...
@michaelfidler : thx for the list! checking it out and already found some interesting newsmakers.. a new ranking-system would still prove very handy though!
@jasongoldberg I'm interested in your thoughts on this. While I'm only a recent addition to the SocialMedian community (though I have been actively engaged on FriendFeed, Del.icio.us, etc..) for some time...so I may be speaking a bit out of turn here...I think that what's largely missing from most socially focused new sites is diversity of interests and intelligent/well informed contributors outside of a few main subject areas. The notion that if you build it, they will come, doesn't really seem to be holding true.
The subjects I see most strongly represented here are tech (very generally speaking), commentary about SocialMedian and social news sites in the broader context, Politics which most of us geeks are interested as well and maybe a bit about Web x.0.
I just don't find very vibrant communities springing up (whether here, on Friendfeed or anywhere else really) around other subject matter. Admittedly, achieving critical mass of interest is challenging even under the best of circumstances. I suspect this is largely because the people who are informed on many of these subjects have better things to do and we're well informed geeks who think technology can organize and improve most everything.
What are your thoughts here? Do you intend SocialMedian to address broader communities of interests, or do you intend to keep it focused on tech / politics? If the former, do you think it's been successful, and if not, how do think you'll draw people in?
@gregscher Greg - this is a great and important question. We have purposely taken a "let 1000 flowers bloom" approach with socialmedian. Users can create News Networks on any topic and we have seen nearly 2000 News Networks created already on an amazingly diverse range of topics. It is not a shock to me that tech, the economy, and politics are currently the "hottest" topics as tech appeals to the early adopters, while the economy and politics are dominating the news. That said, one of the beautiful things about socialmedian is that no two users have the same homepage news feed -- each of our users has their own personalized experience based on their interests and their social graph / connections. There are already interesting discussions happening in micro communities on socialmedian that many folks don't see because they are not in those communities. Will we do more to foster other topics emerging? I'm not sure. My hope is to let the community take it where they want to take it vs. forcing it. That said, we may find some ways to give it a push in certain directions from time to time, as we did a couple of weeks ago by highlighting the financial crisis as a key topic.
You tell us that those are the people that should be followed, but then you tell us that some of them don't contribute much, and that you've posted in the hope that they wll contribute more? OK, well in that case I think we should all follow Johnny Depp in the hope he'll post more here.....
I don't mind haveing recommendations for people to follow, but at least give a reason to follow them!
And @ThomasPower - recommending that people follow YOURSELF is a little narcissistic, even for you honey...
@NikkiPilkington Hey there -- in the heading to this post I noted that these were some "NEW" people you may want to follow. I note: "Here are some new people who you may want to start following on socialmedian. These aren't the most "popular" people on the site, but people who deserve to be more popular and followed."
@nikkipilkington additionally, there are someone who contribute a lot of good content but aren't engaged in discussion (i.e. active on the site). S|M does a better job than any social media site I've seen at pulling in your content from many sources and I think it's easy to forget that there is possibly a discussion fomenting on your content because of that.
There are a lot of newer users that are clipping a lot of good stuff and the more followed they are, the more likely they may be to join the discussion.
Thanks @Nishith! I am still trying to figure out how to mix Social Median in with my other content streaming tools (mostly gReader and FF). It's nice to be able to bounce from one to the other and always have something new (and relevant!) to read.
@sarahcrisman Thanks for the plug, babe. I really need to update my blog again soon, but I actually have work cookin' - so naturally that comes first. I have some very exciting news to share with you all very soon, though. Stay tuned! :)
@jasongoldberg Thanks. I'm certainly not casting stones here as I think Socialmedian is a great tool. The fact is that there will always be destination sites to go for specific types of content, but the value here is the dialouge around the news. Getting people to come here for discussion rather then keeping the conversation localized to those sites will be your challenge. Any thoughts about ways in which to bring the dialog here or at least make it visible here? Give the variety of content management systems, i suspect this is an ugly suggestion, but one I'm sure you've considered.
Not knocking SM at all - everyone should know i'm a big supporter - just a bit confused to be asked to follow poeple for no real reason. Smacks of a numbers game and i get enough of that on other networks ;)
And no, I wasn't complaining that I wasn't on the lists LOL
@NikkiPilkington lol, you're at the top of the list of people everyone needs to follow! this was just intended to be a list of people that many folks didn't realize were on socialmedian yet.
@gregscher you are 100% correct. The value of this sort of offering is in the community and the quality of the conversation. Our entire focus right now is on fostering the dialogue.
@svartling hey, always let us know when you don't like or don't agree. that's what this is all about. that's also why we have a dislike button in addition to a like button. it's the two-way dialogue that makes this work in many ways.
@NikkiPilkington @Adgenius @louisgray What @Jasongoldberg has achieved here is that I'm now following the three of you - never having followed anyone before :) I appreciate real information, real help for my business and blunt, informed opinions - not simply talk for talk's sake.
I got some fancy email saying "Jason Goldberg included you in the story, "Some new people you should follow on soc...". " but i don't see myself anywhere. That's not a question driven out of vanity :) , just wondering why i got the mail.... @jasongoldberg
@jeffdoug I got the same email, although I believe that it was @nishith that included me, although the email said it was Jason. Either way, it got me here, so I guess the email worked.
@jasongoldberg Thank you for the information and the discussion! It is always good to know new people. I am usually storefront type of guy! (Only see people passing by my windows or walk in through my doors!)
@Greghollingsworth same here and now my replies are showing up on my facebook as a post. which is a bit irritating. why i was included in this, not sure,since none of us are on the list itself.
@greghollingsworth @jeffdoug ah, you picked up on one of my favorite new features. Just include @username for any socialmedian user and it will draw them into the discussion. Like I just did here with @christiananderson
@ophelia @jeffdoug What happened on this post in terms of including people was that i posted a comment that included you and some others but deleted it immediately after because i wanted to edit it before officially posting it, but the emails were already sent. we're learning ...
@jasongoldberg wow, so got deleted, never re-added, then an email to rub it in ;) maybe another email "you just got nuked" would work? on a more serious note, i do like the fact that it labels it a reply vs. a include based on where you park their name
@jasongoldberg this is a great feature. It did draw me into the conversation, which i guess was the point. socialmedian is exploding. tons of new people here. great interaction