While drifting through my Friendfeed account I discovered a funny little thing that made me realize something big is happening.

I present to you Conan’s sword and by Crom, it’s an impressive one. This sword is the original used in the movie and this picture was shot in the Californian Governor’s office.

So, what’s so unusual about this?

As you all know (or don’t) Governor Schwarzenegger is very active online. The socially savvy Governor has about 1 million followers on Twitter and has just started a new Twitter account called MyIdea4CA.

But what interests us here is where this picture was taken from, namely Twitpic and how people reacted to it.

Here are a few comments you can find on that page:

• Thats so cool Arnold!!
• Make the Conan King movie, show us the last fight of this sword. CROM!!!
• holy shit arnie thats badass!

Have you noticed how “personal” these comments are? Do not forget that they are addressed to a celebrity and one of the most influential political figures in the USA. Even if “Arnie” doesn’t read all these pieces of text, it doesn’t matter. This example shows that social media is starting to have a strange influence on our behavior and the way we perceive proximity.

Normally, when we meet a celebrity in the street we shyly go ask for an autograph, conscious of the fact we may be disturbing this person. But online, all these inhibitions disappear, leaving space for “friendly” relationships.

While just a few years ago people used to hide behind a nickname and a fake picture, today we all become pals whether we’re a student, a CEO, a celebrity or the President of a country. And even if we’re still using a nickname and an avatar, with all the social networks around and the ‘About’ pages on blogs, it’s getting easier to know our interlocutor.

Now the big question: if one feels pride when directly dealing with his favorite celebrity or politician, how does the alter-ego feel? It is nice to see we are connected with people, but do we feel any real connection?

One can have a populist view on the matter saying that quantity is what matters but, as we’ve recently noticed, many social media experts have started cleaning out their “entourage”.

While in the past we used to be amazed when facing his Highness the King, nowadays we call him by a somewhat irreverent diminutive version of his first name. Does this mean that by creating a pretence of proximity, easy and frequent exposure to the Internet actually encourages us to adopt a blasé attitude?

What do you think? Are we losing touch with reality? Or are we changing society by breaking social strata that have no sense anymore?

Twitter this, Facebook that, Friendfeed here - and you know what!?!

We’ve been under the spell of social media for some time now, trying different platforms and every day seeing new websites popping-up. The question is: where would they be without their first users and advocates? More than any other kind of service, social media platforms rely on the personal brand of their members and often require illustrious people joining them and help promote their service.

Where would Friendfeed be without Robert Scoble? Would Twitter be as successful without Ashton Kutcher or Martha Stewart? (just to name a couple of examples)

This reminds us a little about advertising by Hollywood actors, - except that it’s totally free. I wrote some time ago that social media converges with online bartering. People share their fame and in exchange they see it grow even more; eventually achieving a special status.

This then brings us to two questions:

1. Can a new platform become successful without a famous champion?
2. What if this champion decides to leave the platform?

Let’s focus on Robert Scoble to answer the above. Robert is an employee of Rackspace, a prominent blogger and chief troublemaker in the Building43 community of Internet fanatics. In one of his latest posts, Robert explains why he champions Friendfeed and considers it as a great way to communicate with his audience. Many people have joined Friendfeed following Robert’s suggestion, but will they continue if Robert decides to leave and move on to something else. Will people once again follow his lead?

There are hundreds of new web services opening daily to the public and websites such as Killerstartups help us discover them. Yet the press will only be intrigued by platforms that show serious traction and this often happens with the influence of well-connected and trusted agents. 

We at ZackBrandit haven’t yet found our cheerleaders except for Does this mean we’re doomed to fail even if we have a great plan? Or should we be able to become sustainable with a slowly growing set of followers who believe in our project and values?

Robert can be perceived as a Patron.

Keenly in tune with the way things look, taste, smell and feel, Patrons have a strong appreciation for aesthetics and new things. Compelled to stand out, they are always looking for what others do not have and how to help them get it.

Robert’s blog focuses on the relevance and pertinence of the information he can share with us, and provides a good balance between personal thoughts and concrete facts. His blog has many widgets that focus on his network, yet they do not distract the reader from the posts and the many comments contained. Though Robert has many followers, he only moderately interacts in his blog, preferring to do so on other social media.

There are other reasons why Robert could be perceived as a Patron; for a full description, please visit this portrait's forum and don't hesitate to comment and share your feedback.

Of course this particular profile or Zilhouette is only one out of the 16 possible perceptions; based on your personal background, you might perceive him in a totally different way.

Want to know more about our Zilhouettes?Check this link!

Talking about sharing, I have learnt that very few have actually share information about fellow bloggers or micro-bloggers. This might have been the case in the beginning of the blogging age, but today, few are the rookies succeeding in making their place and many decide to call it quits. When saying great minds are often less than capable communicators, it also means a potentially great loss for the virtual community.

Wasn’t Web2.0 about collaboration and helping each other out? Why not organize mentoring, coaching and webinars for new bloggers? Are there any headhunters looking around for the talented writer eager to get some readership?

Several efforts have been undertaken such as Bloggersbase, an Israeli venture presented at LeWeb. Its model is based on a contest where the quality of the posts provides you with a status. The higher your status, the more visibility you get - same as everywhere else. However, there are organized timeslots where bloggers compete. Those elected as the best can, in time, join the elite. In other words, if the system works well, everyone has a fair chance to get his share of the spotlight. It works like an international football (soccer) tournament: you start with qualifying pools and the winners continue until the finals. Then you start again, with the former winner maintaining a small head start.

As I stated before, social media is a form of bartering, and thus we at ZackBrandit have decided to start with our own hopefully not too futile small initiative. We have noticed that there’s no bloggers listing for members on LinkedIn, and as a network of professionals there are surely plenty of interesting ones. We have created a list using Deli.cio.us, which can be found here. This list is updated daily with LinkedIn members who have asked us to add their blog, and each blog is forwarded to my Friendfeed account. In this way, we wish to provide a helping hand and create increased visibility to fellow bloggers, while at the same time perhaps finding some great content (yep, not everybody is on Tweeter yet).

Should you wish to be added to this list, please send an email to zack@zackbrandit.com and include the following details: 1. LinkedIn profile URL 2. Name of Blog 3.  Blog URL 4. RSS Feed 5. Is your blog professional, semi-pro or hobby? 6.  3 tags 7. Language of blog

You can check every blog one by one or make a search using the cloud, but most importantly, each blog is connected to a LinkedIn profile giving you more information about the author.

Please be assured that this list is not used for other purposes than for the listing.

Also, do not hesitate to send us suggestions to improve this list.

This post aims to be thought-provoking, yet I hope you won’t skip it.

While Twitter works as a messaging tool with limited local aggregation (though some call it a social network…), Friendfeed is a pure aggregator linking different platforms. Both offer a direct or indirect way to respond and provide comments to others, which helps develop a conversation-like appearance.  

However, can we really call it a conversation?

Does it sound revolting to your ears?
Please don’t refrain from leaving a comment…after reading the rest of the post.

Darren Rowse from ProBlogger and Sonny Gill shared some thoughts on the subject in the following two posts:
1. Do you Converse or Broadcast? & 2. When is Broadcasting OK on Twitter?

While both talked about the importance of conversation, they also show that the basis of Twitter is broadcasting (call it irony) and that new users will intuitively use it for self-branding. According to Sonny “Twitter is often mistaken as a broadcasting platform for people to spit out anything and everything. In the end, adhering to the Twitter culture and being respectful of the tips listed above will influence your experience…”

Aha! So there is more to Twitter than just a piece of software! The users have made it evolve from a broadcasting tool to a conversational platform by incorporating guidelines or a culture. At the end of the day, a tool is a means and not an end, and its value lies in the way it is used and not necessarily its original purpose. Text messaging on mobile phones has already proven this in the past. Some countries have serious education issues due to text messaging since teenagers have adapted their writing to the limited writing space for text messages, and ignore correct grammar. So why not call it a cultural evolution?

Whether we are talking about blogs or micro-blogs, both share one common value: content. There are millions of bloggers around the world and many have started using micro features to obtain speed, visibility and simplicity. Most users share information about their life, business, ideas and recent discoveries that they’ve made. People connect to others based on quality of the content, updating speed, but also for the prominence of the communicator. This is human and even Lemurian (don’t forget I’m a Lemur); we all act the same way. While many use the latter reason in order to develop their own personal network and obtain visibility, all this actually shows one important trend:

By placing information at the centre, the Internet has trivialized people. Think about it: only a minority puts the source in their tweets, except if published by a paper, and social network members often place the relationship before the actual person. If information were the main concern, wouldn’t it imply that the most important fact would be to know where to find the most suitable or original fact and not the most convenient one? In this case, popularity does not guarantee the best result, even if the size of the network helps. Since many tweet about online discoveries, they may add a link to the place where they found it, which in turn can be the result of aggregation or word-of-mouth. In other words, authors can be happy to see their news-piece propagating, but their name might get lost in the process. Great minds are less than often capable communicators.

The world is made up of a few mavens and many connectors (read Tipping Point for more info) and the virtual world might have become more beneficial to the second category. Today, only a handful of mavens who share their knowledge also have a large direct readership. Most connectors redirect the information while adding some personal insight.

Are these disparaging ways part of our new culture, where popularity overtakes value? Is this the new facet of Pop culture? Was Andrew Keen that far from reality with his book The Cult of the Amateur?

Some say that popular culture and the mass media have a symbiotic relationship, as each depends on the other in an intimate collaboration. Kings of the past used entertainment and bread to raise their popularity rating; which could justify saying that popularity might have been king for ages. Does this mean that by spreading information using addictive means and increasing their readers base, a few popular bloggers (and micro-bloggers) are the kings of the 21st century and the new conveyors of trends & cultures?

If Twitter and the other micro-blogging tools are indeed broadcasting channels, then we can count ourselves lucky that a participative and conversational culture has been developed. But here come the two major differences with all the other facets of pop culture: firstly, we are not talking about something tangible or even sensorial such as music, cooking, or clothes. Instead, the focus is the information about those subjects (did you say “magazine”?). Secondly, most “artists” have managers, agents or counselors; yet, in our case the one conveying the message is also the one managing the flow and the cultural guidelines.

Popularity also brings its share of fans and followers, in turn creating the bandwagon effect. Can we really talk about conversation and equal participation when some prominent bloggers are connected 24h/day?

There are many questions in this post and no answers. We all believe that social media has and will have a huge impact on our society. The fact that companies and some institutionalized people are trying to get a hold on it might bring a shift in power.

Nietzsche considered knowledge as power, but in today’s world isn’t it the game master, the one controlling the rules and the flow who has the power?