Social Media Breakfast – 29th March 2008

I went rather late because someone overslept. Haha, but I have to thank him for picking me up and driving Jean and myself over to the venue. Long commutes involving buses and trains are terrible( yes, I’m being whiny here ).

When I got there, there was already quite a lot of people but I was glad that there were quite a number of new faces that I haven’t met before. Some people like Robert, Derrick, Brian(litford) and Hisham(Juzzywuzzy) were some of whom I met just now. Of course there were a ton of other people whom I’d wanted to talk to but didn’t really get a chance to. I’m a person that would rather talk in depth with a few people rather than “touch-and-go” with many.

Amongst the many things that we talked about, I had a conversation with litford about the evolution of social media as a whole. When it comes to issues like blogging and advertising, we have a long way to go when compared to our foreign counterparts. In many places, social media has given a voice to people who want to make change in society yet locally most players are still at the stage where they’re trying to use the medium for personal gain.

I like how he puts it, “the blogs become the product.” And this has led to a ton of blogs that add litter to the Net for the sole purpose of trying to garner hits…which are of course the currency one trades in for advertising dollars.

All that said, some of us also talked about the use of twitter to create more awareness of things. What interested me was how people were using twitter. By and large, most people use it as a tool to keep in touch with their friends(an existing network of people) while a few use it to tap into other networks(something I’m currently trying out). In the latter, it’s interesting to note that once you start following more than 200 people, the focus shifts from following the activities of individuals to the activities of communities. In the former, you’re looking for where your friend is going to eat or what show he’s catching but in the latter, you’re trying to figure out what’s happening in general for a certain group of people.

Oh, I also found out from Shaun about “improv everywhere“. Let’s do something along that line man…

Overall, people were great. Topics of conversation were insightful and…yeah…Food was just nice.

And of course, this is “tagcloud” I left with…I think some stuff dropped off along the way.

More Information 
1. Original post about Social Media Breakfast

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1. Social Media Breakfast 2
2. Social Media Breakfast 6
3. Clay Shirky on Social Media
4. Twitter Updates for 2008-04-17
5. Twitter Updates for 2008-03-29