It's always interesting to see how different communities of interest intersect and connect. During my recent trip to Israel, I was ask to visit the team at Egloomedia and get a sneak peak at their new social aggregation application - 8hands. It's a neat product - think of it as one window to manage all your online social connections and communities - flickr, twitter, facebook etc.
What I like about 8hands is that it starts to address what I call "Continuous Partial Community". The brilliant Linda Stone first coined the term Continuous Partial Attention to address the information overloaded many of us live in today. In Linda's words,
We manage our time. We don't manage our attention.
Managing time is all about lists, optimization, efficiency, and it's TACTICAL. Managing attention is all about INTENTION, making choices as to what DOES and DOES NOT get done, and it's STRATEGIC. Managing time is an action journey. Managing attention is an emotional journey.
I think we are currently going through Rev 2 of this challenge. Many of us are linked through a vast spider web of connections, communities and applications (both online and offline). At times we weave through this network efficiently but most often we do not. As a result, we are spread very thin and what we end up with is nothing like a traditional idea of 'community' but more of being partially connected continuously to a number of hubs through a variety of complex spokes. It is no wonder that so many smart people are addressing the issues of attention, flow and "edgework" these days. It begs the question(s):
- What is our intention with all these communities?
- How do we interact in a meaningful way with all of these connections?
- What is "meaningful" in this landscape?
- What is the definition of Community when affiliations are so loose and easily coupled/uncoupled?
- How do we build applications to maintain a good flow between clusters?
- What is the role of attention in the Relationship Economy?
The model for many online communities is to be The Hub (aka a portal), but I live out at the Spokes more and more these days. I weave and flow (or not) between them. Unfortunately, the business models built on PV ad models and demand for corralling users into one sign-in location is simply not the best model for the individual going forward.
Which brings me back to my visit to 8hands. I liked what 8hands was trying to do enough that I agreed to advise the company if they would get a Mac version out the door ASAP. I am a Mac user and I can't rightly agree to test a product without using it myself. Additionally - a lot of my friends and colleagues who live in the Social Media space are Mac users as well and I just knew they would want to play as well. Alas, Apple has never done a very good job at penetrating the Israeli market. Opening my Mac at a cafe in Tel Aviv brought envious stares and small talk along the lines of "Cool, a Mac, can I play with it".
So - surprise - two days after my meeting in Tel-Aviv, I receive an email from Ron Shelly, who informs me that the Product Manager of 8hands told him I was in town with my Mac and would I be willing to be interviewed for his documentary film on the cult of the Mac (which includes an interview with the original community evangelist - Guy Kawasaki!) How cool! So, here is a small snip of the interview and my thoughts on connecting the cult of the Mac to today's world of Social Media and Marketing.
Note: I am stuck with the YouTube thumbnail and some out of sync audio for now. Also, before you click, I thought it interesting to point out that Linda worked at Apple back in 1986 - it all comes full circle in the end, doesn't it.
