Ross Mayfield's Weblog

Free Social Software & SocialCalc Release

Today we announced something I'm pretty proud of.  Socialtext is now free for up to 50 users.  And we're finally taking SocialCalc out of beta. From the press release:

Socialtext, the leading provider of Enterprise 2.0 solutions, today announced the availability of Socialtext Free 50, a new free offering aimed at mainstream use for up to 50 people within an organization to collaborate using Socialtext's social software platform. Employees can join or create their own private collaboration networks by using their work email address at Socialtext.com. In addition to the new free offering, the company announced the immediate availability of SocialCalc, the first social spreadsheet program that simplifies version control, reduces errors and increases productivity for distributed teams.

Check out Dan Bricklin's five minute screencast demo of SocialCalc:

For me, this is really a major moment. I finally can do the demo I've been wanting to do for years: A complete budget example with a rollup of 50 states into a country total, with each of the 50 states' pages dependent upon other pages with country-wide values (such as price lists and model factors), and each with a link to a wiki discussion page.

You can change a master model factor (such as default growth or default product mix) or a particular state's values (such as sales growth override value) and then load the USA or regional page and see them all recalculated to provide the latest totals.

Here's some coverage:

• TechCrunch: Socialtext Goes Freemium With Socialtext Free 50
• ReadWriteWeb: 30 Years After VisiCalc, Socialtext Unveils SocialCalc & Freemium Pricing
• VentureBeat: Collaboration software Socialtext goes free for up to 50 users
• Dan Bricklin: New SocialCalc release for the OLPC

Parental iPhone

This is a bit childish, but I have to blog it. My son, before learning to read, was able to choose his own free apps, download and play them on my iPhone. This isn't just babysitting expediency for parents. Its a mark of how far we've come.  While we have a long way to resolve the digital divide, I don't think I imagined 10 or 20 years ago the illiterate could access at this level. Technology is there, however symbolic. And before you say its just games, just remember that we all learn from games first.

btw, for posterity sake, the "Dude, where's my phone" app and Video iPhone I've been talking about in want happened today. And the above link? Credited on NPR today with helping an autistic child learn to read, at least in part.

The Politics of Attention & Microblogging Governance

Marshall Kirkpatrick surveyed the use of Twitter by the people who work at Twitter and found that they use it like regular people use Twitter. They post 2-3 times a day and follow a reasonable level of less than 500 people. However, being people who work at Twitter they have a lot of followers. The man bites dog part of the story, however, is that Twitter gets its power from the people who use and develop upon Twitter, so shouldn't they be paying inordinate attention to those people?

There is only one Robert Scoble. He's the prisoner who takes the experimental drugs to see part of the future for us, and we get the FDA approved drug years later. He follows, well, everybody (almost 100k people).  Did the same thing when RSS came onto the scene by subscribing to 10k feeds.  Yeah, sure this is in part a publicity stunt, and drives up his own follower count, but that's not his point. By emodying the power user he sees things we don't see. Not what he gets from his followers, but from coping with attention overload. Guess what Robert wants Twitter to develop next? Filters.

But guess what?  In Twitter people are the filters. When you follow them you not only get what they say, but what they share, often from people you don't follow. Its not just a reply-optional medium, but subscribe-optional, and social serendipity lets it stay that way.

Despite the recent @replies kerfuckle, social serendipity works on Twitter because of asymmetric follow. On the other end of the spectrum, Facebook is trying to break out of how serendipity happens despite symmetric follow, often in ways where privacy has to be broken to reveal new people (photo tags, comments, etc.). Social software is stuff that gets spammed, especially on Twitter. Note how trending topics is gamed by spammers and watch what will happen as new microsyntax conventions get popular. With @, RT, # and more Twitter employees discover plenty.

80% of Twitter accounts have <10 followers. I follow less than 500 people and have a lot more followers.  This lets me spend a reasonable amount of focus on some people I know and curate good things to share for many people I don't. I make a point to follow new people, but also drop others, so my filter is constantly shifting. I'd be a lot more concerned if the Twitter employee follow list was static than it being small and naturally focused.

Now I don't want to take away from Marshall's core point that Twitter employees need to listen to their community. But I don't think their base follow list is enough to say they aren't listening. At #140tc, Alex Payne noted how they use CoTweet for organizational tracking and internal assignment, for example. Similar to how Signals pulls Tweets in for organizational awareness. Listening, learning and responding as an organization takes a different approach than how a power user could and should. And you can bet Anamitra and other team members pay a lot more attention to things that trend than we do.

Stowe Boyd rightly notes the key issue is governance. While we shouldn't expect a representative democracy from the venture that is Twitter, a broad check and balance is in place.  As Stowe quips, "But it is our dancing that makes the house rock, not the planks and pipes. It is us that makes Twitter alive, and not the code."

Google is an advertising company, not a search company, so too Twitter is a media company not a communication utility company. Form follows funding, and so too governance.  Twitter the venture has lately taken a position similar to an old fashioned media company, relatively neutral and unbiased in enabling commercial relationships to form on its platform.  A good approach for long term value. But as a new media company, these opporunities arise asymmetrically from what emerges from communication. I find this a useful analogy to help explain Twitter's business, and if the neutrality principle is true, we can help keep it in check.

I wouldn't want Twitter employees to drive up their following count in response to this. At best it could be a false guesture and at worst it would distract them from getting shit done. Similarly, I wouldn't want the structure of a Signals network to map to the org chart of a company.  The politics of attention may want it to, but as a culture of use emerges it is more likely to represent flows than silos.