Memetic Brand

Twitter Matters #4: social capital discussion evolving

November 4th, 2008 — Michael G. Cayley

Okay, now seriously! It is nice to have amusing examples like the one below of how a meme can spread via twitter.

Pointing out a memetic trigger like a “violation of viewing habits” is valuable to this idea of memetic brand building.

But check out this, perhaps more complex example, of twitter being at the heart of the development of shared perception. Click here to see the whole discussion.

vibemetrix and JBordeaux could of had a discussion like this in person, over the telephone, via email or IM. But they never knew each other until this conversation broke out.

a chat about social capital

That is significant in a number of ways.

1. Their Twitter use made their interests and expertise findable so that they could quickly and easily explore the idea together.

2. Twitter made their exchange findable by others, who could quickly add to the development of the idea or at least follow their thinking.

3. Many who were not trying to find the related discussion have been “infected” with the thinking because they are followers of the users involved in the exchange. In this case, that may have added up to thousands, with little or no effort on behalf of the original thinkers. Even though these two users are working at the genesis of an idea, they are thought leaders.

Whether observers accept or reject their thinking is one thing. The cool point is that they don’t have to go through that thinking learning curve in the same way for themselves. They have a memetic blueprint to work forward with.

I think there are many productivity breakthroughs to explore along these lines that we are only beginning to see the potential of.

I would be interested in hearing thoughts on why Twitter seems more exciting and/or useful than forums? Forums also enable people to find topics and related discussions but they always frustrate the hell out of me. I expect to find what I am looking for, but never can.

Maybe it is because on Twitter, I find what I am not looking for and it is related discussion?

Great comment below by Kim Patrick Kobza, CEO, Neighborhood America re: cognitive outliers, real time group cognition

Update:

I have turned my evolving reflections about twitter into a series of posts. Catch the other thoughts:

Why Twitter Matters #1: Follow me, Follow You on Twitter

Why Twitter Matters #2: Memetic Logos

Why Twitter Matters #3: Escalopter

Why Twitter Matters #5: Twitter and Social Capital

Why Twitter Matters #6: Twitter Love Song

UPDATE@Nov.4, 2008 - an overview of StockTwits from Stowe Boyd.

UPDATE@Dec.1, 2008 - Tim O’Reilly “Why I Love Twitter”

Posted in memetic brand, memetic theory, social capital, social media, word of mouth. 4 Comments »

Twitter Matters #1: Follow Me, Follow You on Twitter

June 4th, 2008 — Michael Cayley

memeticbrand

That’s my twitter handle. Despite the technical problems that Twitter has been having, I finally took the plunge at MESH08. I promised to monitor the “back channel” for a few of the panelists on www.twemes.com and I just could not stand being a fly on the wall any longer.

I must say that being live in one session and monitoring the tweets from two other sessions brought an incredible FULL ON level of engagement that I could not image before Twitter and Twemes.

But my main motive for joining Twitter is not to monitor back channel. My real reason is that I want to tell you all about what I ate for dinner - NOT.

My real reason is because I definitely think that it is a new medium that is particularly suited for memetic branding purposes.

Firstly, there is still a relatively small group of people on twitter (even less following me!). They are the early adoptors and in most cases, they publish blogs and other web content, so they are endowed with scaled up forms of social capital.

Perhaps more importantly, I think Twitter is a medium that is involved in the genesis of shared perception. From a memetic branding stand point, that is worth exploring.

Finally, over the years I have lived in different parts of Asia, Europe and North America. My personal network is stretched by time and geography. So far, only a few of my contacts are on Twitter, but I can really see how this is going to make the value of these global relationships present in each moment, in a much more tangible and immediate way.

I can only describe my initial impressions of Twitter as - prescience.

15hrs ago - “I am brushing my teeth”. Can’t you see the potential!