Jasper Westaway's Blog

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Modes of Conversation

Until recently, there were three typical approaches to holding a conversation on the web: instant messaging, email and newsgroups.

A year ago I used to draw the following diagram:

I argued that these different channels fitted different modes of conversation along a single axis of formality and that conversations only ever became more formal. IM’s are on-the spot-conversations I have because you’re online; when I want to cover my backside, I use email; and when I want to involve a larger community and contribute the conversation to a long-lived information base, I employed newsgroups. One never starts a serious conversation and downgrades it to be less formal (though less formal side-conversations may be spawned).

A sucker punch accompanies this argument: These channels are silo-ed and so conversations never do escalate; they remain in the channels to which they were born. Arbitrary protocols constrain the evolution of any given conversation. Probably most of us have had the following experiences:

• The need to transition an on-the spot conversation to one which is longer-living (e.g. questions that we need to research to answer, actions that can be signed off) and involves more people.

• The need to transition from a string (knot?) of emails to a structured discussion with outcomes and information that could be utilized in the future. It also explains emails dominance, despite its obvious weaknesses: Email was in the middle and therefore provided the best compromise approach. This property is something I shall keep returning to.

I reviewed this argument recently and in light of using Facebook and Twitter, I realised it was hopelessly simplistic; the sharp-minded among you will have detected the fault lines in the forgoing explanation.

There are at least two other axes where conversations sit along:

1. Synchronous-Asynchronous: I start an IM conversation because I can see you are online. If you were not online I would have used email; BUT, if I thought that you weren’t going to respond to my email inside two weeks then I would not have sent it at all – an emails utility times out. Read newsgroups and you see that the responses frequently come back over months or even years - so newsgroups are extremely asynchronous. Note that email still sits in the middle. Slightly orthogonal to this article, but if I want to force a synchronous conversation I’ll call you. That’s great, but typically we want asynchronicity because it allows us hold multiple concurrent conversations. This is the fundamental form of modern collaboration, and any approach that is not predicated on this will fail (are you listening Second Life?).

2. Narrow/broad casting: An IM is a conversation with YOU. I know I can invite others into a conversation through most IM tools/protocols but typically I do not. As such, IM is strongly narrowcast. Email can start off as a conversation with you but can quickly be expanded to involve others. Newsgroups are open in nature and thus broadcast. To labour the obvious: email is yet again in the middle.

What about directionality along these axes? Certainly successful conversations become more asynchronous because they involve more people. But hang on Jasper, you’re mixing your axes! Isn’t the ‘more people’ term a simile for broadcast? And what exactly is a successful conversation?

I don’t know but it is probably measureable: Length, number of spawned conversations, number of participants, number of outcomes, actions etc. And yes I mixed my axes. Successful conversations are probably formal, asynchronous and broadcast.

So the question beckons: What place do Facebook and Twitter occupy on these axes?

I think they line up with email here; conversations remain a jumble, and yet have an order and threading that is more sophisticated than IM, but less so than a newsgroup.

I think that Facebook and Twitter are rather more synchronous than email because conversations are within a broader stream that leaves conversations behind if they do not remain fresh.

This is an interesting one because Facebook is DEFAULT PRIVATE, whereas Twitter is DEFAULT PUBLIC. So although they can move along this axis, they tpically reside here. So like a political party, grabbing the middle ground is probably the right strategy. Twitter and Facebook sit in that middle ground like email and that is why I think they are genuinely important (despite personal reservations I have with respect to the range of use-cases that they support).

There are weaknesses in this line of argument. Are newsgroups really broadcast when there is a single place you read them? Just because the door is open and you don’t know all the people in the room, it does not follow that you are broadcasting. I’ve played with the metaphor of coupling as an alternative. In newsgroups we are coupled strangers because we haunt the same forum. But on Twitter I am typically broadcasting but loosely coupled.

There is also an important relationship between broadcast and formality; how I talk and present argument is different if lots of people can see my chatter, than if I’m talking to my inner circle i.e. I automatically move to a formal mode when broadcasting.

What we are with witnessing with Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Tumblr et al are baby steps to better modality of conversation. What no one has yet demonstrated is a viable approach to shifting those modalities as the conversation demands. There is a big opportunity for anyone that really cracks this.

Watching my 2.5 year old son play with others reminds me collaboration is learnt and ritualistic.

The Dawning of the Age of Transparency?

I think a theme has emerged in some of my posts:

• Transparency is the best mechanism for preventing and resolving crises
• Information is becoming ubiquitous (ie. greater transparency is inevitable)

Neither of these are startling insights, but I’ll go further and posit that we are moving towards an age where our lives and the lives of businesses and institutions are transparent, and that this is in almost every case, a good thing.

I’ve assembled a deliberately mixed bag of examples:

1. Twitter allows us to have conversations with strangers and overshare with friends.
2. Steve Jobs and Apple are criticized for being unforthcoming about his health
3. Jade Goody - lives and dies on TV; more generally the rise of reality TV
4. Banks fail to account for systemic risk
5. Porsche sinks hedge funds by failure to disclose cornering of market in VW shares, an act that would be illegal in UK or US but possibly legal in Germany
6. Guido Fawkes, an outsider and blogger, shines a light on the behavior of UK politicians and the Governments comfortable relationship with political journalists
7. http://www.transparency.org/
8. Freedom of Information requests.

What do these examples tell us?

• Many of us have embraced transparency in our personal lives
• We expect institutions that have a public face to behave more openly with stakeholders than in the past
• There are institutions that desperately need to shift to more transparent modes
• Mechanisms and metrics for transparency are formalizing
• Modern media allows for greater transparency
• Modern media empowers individuals that crave transparency

I think this is a fundamental trend that will become significantly stronger. Why?

• Democracy is the undisputed political system despite holdouts, and transparency is a critical pillar of democracy
• The Internet as a ubiquitous information platform
• We strengthen then movement as we embrace what appears inevitable

And it is a good thing because:

• It minimizes corruption
• It creates more efficient economies
• It creates less risky economies
• It creates more opportunities

Different kinds of Platform

I was pitching a new business idea to a friend last night. His first response was:

“You used the dirty word”.

I had to think about it.

“Platform?” I replied.

“Yes”.

For years it has been wisdom that the use of the word ‘Platform’ in pitches to VC’s is poison. I went into defensive mode.

“Google stopped ‘Platform’ being a dirty word five years ago.”

Afterwards I thought about the conversation more, and my conclusion was that there are platforms and there are platforms.

‘Customization Platforms’ are bad. These are software/hardware platforms you spend money to acquire and then a lot more money making them do something useful. I have worked for a company that did precisely this (and it accordingly struggled).

‘Solution Platforms’ are good. These are software/hardware platforms that do something out of the box, but from the providers perspective that first solution represents an investment, because every subsequent solution is cheaper to produce.

Essentially this is the advantage of good engineering. It does not determine initial success, but it does provide an economic advantage that allows the provider to produce more products/functionality cheaper and faster thereafter.

So why didn’t they do this for Northern Rock?

I never understood the Northern Rock rescue. Supposedly we (the taxpayer) had to secure Northern Rocks future to prevent a run on other financial institutions.

It never made sense; all the government needed to do was guarantee the deposits (Lenders don’t care if the society fails). That was the only message anyone needed to prevent a run.

And that is what they have now done with Dunfermline Building Society. It will fail or be acquired.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7970669.stm

Where to put your money? (if you have any)

So, if you’re lucky enough to be sitting on cash, where should you invest it?

Savings account? No, interest rate too low. Bonds? Err too high risk and rates too low (unless you were already holding mature debt). Equity? Possibly but it’s a long term bet with plenty of risk attached. Commodities? Err.. no, I think that would be a straight forward bet.

So I think Venture Capital is a great option currently. They operate on longer investment cycles and typically invest in businesses that have higher costs than revenue and therefore perceive downturns as an option to get talented staff.

On this note, I saw a reference to the rise of the VC in this period here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7959434.stm

In Praise of Inflation

I was surprised today, by economists surprise at a rise in UK inflation. Devaluation causes temporary inflation as the prices of imported goods rise and buyers take time to adjust their purchase habits.

That got me thinking: what we really need is a good bout of inflation: Inflation destroys debt. In the 1980’s, my parents had several horrible years living with high interests that were in place to manage high inflation. This made mortgages horrendous

But there was an upside. After two or three years, the value of the outstanding mortgage had been substantially diminished.

We, the UK (along with several other countries) have a debt problem. The shortest route to dealing with that problem would be to let inflation rip. Obviously it would cause other problems which might be collectively worse. But the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh.

what happened to google maps?

I used to love google maps. But it’s terrible now. You enter an address and the bubble in the middle is rendered under the controls so that you cant close the bubble. And dragging, which worked effortlessly before, now requires some action because I keep rescaling the map accidentally.

It’s a great example of how to muller a nice UI.

Wow CloudCamp was boring last night. What a disappointment.

Looking forward to CloudCamp tonight