Last night I believe I saw a fine example of a social networking in action, possibly not the average but still…
There we were excited and on way to seeing Jay-Z at the Roundhouse, as you do these days – you share your excitement with the masses and let them know what you are doing – both myself and Dj Firestarr did this to our particular and very different groups of followers on Twitter.
Soon after, tweets start flooding back (more to Firestarr than me sadly) commenting that they too were going to the RoundHouse… then other people we are following are sharing their excitement… after half an hour we have identified a trend that a majority of followers, radio Djs and many other randoms have decided to go to Nando’s prior the gig.
Suddenly, unaware we have our own little social group – many of which we can not identify but know are present.
It’s almost the opposite to an online game avatar – you’re at home – logon – go in to The World Of War Craft and meet people also sitting in their homes….
In the Twitter case we are all in the same building and area talking over an online network possibly trying to suss who is who…
At one point the search function of Twitter comes in to play so everyone can post #innandos and all get in touch with each other…
A great example of the power of the social network I think.
Then whilst writing it brings me to the bigger question – could this be where the giant of networking tools starts to capitalise – what if like Google advertisers brands purchase keywords and could purchase them to be linked when used in such situations? E.g #innandos is started – the end users sees no cost but if Nandos purchase their keyword it then activates and links to their site (or promotion) when used? So the brand gets some recognition or new people can get involved in lesser known # conversations if they know the meaning.
This could evolve to things like #hoovers this then hyperlinks who ever purchases hoovers and could direct you to where ever it is Dyson would like when to direct their traffic.
This cant go to far to interrupt the conversations and infiltrate the general text of a post as it might post something with a link and then there are 5 other words linking in my post – that’s just going to p!ss people off.
Just a thought….
I will admit – this is prone to spam… but I have noticed the amount of spam on Twitter at the minute – especially those capitalising on top trends by just sticking the work ‘Jay Z’ in to their tweet about white teeth for $5.
The spammers then get me thinking about that huge number of users… and how many are genuine active users!? :-s
Jigga what? Jigga who?
