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So Mary, what project would that be?
What will I do? I will continue to stay involved early on and contribute to the "conversation".
We have to remember, too, that conversations on FriendFeed easily start around topics that are shared by a lot of people. The more special a topic gets, the less likely is a conversation as there might be only a few people (1) understanding it, (2) being now on FriendFeed and (3) being willing to engage.
In the end it might be a question of math! And as people on the street very likely start a conversation about the weather they do it on FriendFeed about FriendFeed. What do you think of this explanation?
Yes things take time to develop but I'm not specifically talking about FriendFeed here - that was purely an example and it illustrates that people get hung up on the tools rather than what they can be used for.
Social media has been around for quite a while now with sites like Facebook and MySpace having some good traction - good enough that Vodafone are using Facebook as a pulling point in a national ad campaign in the UK. But herein lies the problem: people divide the concept up in to walled gardens (my Facebook community, my Twitter friends etc.) rather than embracing it as an entire online experience. Forget what service you are using and instead concentrate on the people, on the connections, on the potential.
The potential of social media is incredible and the range of discussions possible between the diverse people on the web should be almost infinite but our segregation in to distinct groups is holding us back, although it is unfortunately unavoidable.
As I have said before, though, just SAYING things will be different in 2 years does not make a difference, we need to be sowing the seeds now and giving a reason that social media should be adopted if we ever want to see it go truly mainstream.
Just wrote a response to this. Check it out if you get a minute
http://tillingthesoil.wordpress.com/2008/07/11/...