Twitter lists have rolled out, and there is already a lot of conversation surrounding the feature. Like many, I think that lists will be a big step forward for Twitter in helping to corral conversations and mine the knowledge of subject-area experts. Combined with search and following, lists provide another vector for contextualizing information on the network.

Much of the early discussion on Twitter lists has focused on aspects of the social capital that is granted to users that find themselves placed on numerous lists. Already, there are dozens, or even hundreds, of users that can boast of being on more than 1,000 lists. Declarations of listings being the new followings are pouring down from the rafters, and indeed there are clear social consequences to being singled out individually as having some characteristic that earns you a spot on such a list.

But while I have so often before been happy to theorize to my heart’s content, in the case of lists I wanted to try something more proactive. I am going to embark on a project to monitor the most-followed lists and see what insights can be drawn from their movements. Taking inspiration from that list of lists that has attempted to draw meaning out of the chaos of the market, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, I decided to create a Twitter Lists Index of 30 entries.

Twitter List Index Nov 2

The Twitter Lists Index will be compiled daily by me. The list shall consist of the 30 most-followed lists on Twitter, beginning with the most-followed and descending to the 3oth most-followed. In addition to the number of followers that a list has, the number of users that it itself follows will be included, as well as the username of the creator of the list and any relevant link to an official blog or other social media presence.

The means of compiling the list shall be subject to change and improvements moving forward. I have used a combination of sources for the inaugural Twitter Lists Index, including a script from Vobios and figures from Listorious. In all cases I have referred to list pages on Twitter to get the most up-to-date follower numbers. Obviously, these can change over time.

I’m quite interested to see what happens with Twitter Lists, and have a lot of other thoughts to share about the early batch of influential Twitter Lists. Let me know what you think about the subject in the comments, and please consider following me at @hornokplease.

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Filed under: Announcements, Features
Posted by: Richard
On: Tuesday, November 3rd

Trends are very trendy right now. In an effort to develop a couple of short features for the blog, I’ve settled on a regular post exploring what I recognize to be emerging trends in network identity, digitization, globalization and the other themes that inform this blog.

So here’s the first entry in that series: Microcelebrity

The notion of microcelebrity was first spelled out years ago by Clive Thompson at Wired. In his words, Microcelebrity is “the phenomenon of being extremely well known not to millions but to a small group.” In its first iteration, it was mostly linked to personalities that used the web to build a toehold in the discourse of popular culture, and was typically fodder for blogs and some unscrupulous print rags.

Now, however, I see the notion of microcelebrity taking root. There is the obvious reference to Twitter power-users getting increasing visibility as content concierges, but I am more interested of late in the use of microcelebs in marketing and promotional campaigns online because it suggests to me that businesses see real potential to profit through these strategies. Here are three recent examples to illustrate the trend:

1. Carl’s Jr. recently launched a campaign employing YouTube microcelebs to promote their new $6 Portobello Burger.

2. Ford’s Fiesta Movement campaign to promote the new product line employs 100 ‘Agents of the Fiesta Movement’ to blog, vlog and otherwise share their experience with the car.

3. JetBlue is trying to build buzz for their new service to LAX from JFK and BOS with a planeload of social media microcelebs who will create and upload content during the inaugural journey.

While these are only a couple examples, industry watchers do believe that social media spending will continue to grow while display ads decline. This may be a happy medium for now between direct connection with individual customers (which has had some messy consequences before) and the lofty and unreachable heights of ‘proper’ celebrities who are more picky about endorsement deals. You can expect more campaigns of this type in the future.

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Filed under: Announcements, Features
Posted by: Richard
On: Friday, June 19th

Yet again the blog has hit the quick sand. Having recharged the batteries and experienced some excitement and wonder in a foreign land, I think that now it is time to recommit myself once more to the project of this blog. Following in the footsteps of my pal Ryan over at MetaBrandGreen, I suppose one way to encourage that recommitment would be to begin with a statement of principles that underlie my thinking about communication, technology and society, and drive the kind of coverage that I will be providing on Blunks.

1. We did not arrive in this contemporary networked condition by accident; it is rather the necessary consequence of the process of modernity that began in the Age of Enlightenment. In the modern industrial era, scientific methods and mathematical modeling were applied to social organization, establishing an ideology of measurement, analysis and forecasting that enabled the rapid advancement of material conditions in ‘developed’ nations. Through the application of statistics, the methods of organizing society (demography, education, planning) depended on the reducibility of social conditions to numbers on a spreadsheet that can always be analyzed and cross-referenced in relation to one another. Adorno & Horkheimer: “Society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract qualities.”

2. Increasing prosperity among a significant proportion of the populations of ‘developed’ nations and technological improvements in the means of production in the late 19th and early 20th century transformed the lifestyles of citizens. In addition to their existing cultural, physical and social identities, the people of modern industrial societies gained a new consumer identity as their social behavior adapted to the new material conditions facing them. In this situation, identity becomes inextricably related to consumption, and an individual’s taste in products that say something about what makes them different. Bourdieu: “Tastes (i.e., manifested preferences) are the practical affirmation of an inevitable difference. It is no accident that, when they have to be justified, they are asserted purely negatively, by the refusal of other tastes.”

3. Following this process of data accumulation and identity formation, the Network Society has emerged as a consequence of the digitization and subsequent pooling of what had been individual data silos. Crucially (and consequentially), the ruling ideology that guided this process from the start was benevolent and not commercial, favoring increased access, data and redundancy over strict hierarchies of power and arbitrary restrictions on access. Castells: “[The Internet] was rooted in a scientific dream to change the world through computer communication.”

4. In the present network society, another transformational process is ongoing in the area of computer-mediated communication. With technology having conquered geography, individuals have ever greater ability to communicate with physically remote audiences. Barriers that once made mass self communication prohibitively expensive have crumbled for those with access to the network, and a new paradigm of networked communication prevails. In the social environment of the network, identity plays a crucial role in establishing relationships and developing connections between the actors and institutions that constitute the network itself. Zuckerberg: “Facebook … makes it really easy to just stay in touch with all of these people.”

These four principles underlie my thinking and reasoning on communication, culture and technology and the content of this blog will be concerned with exploring and expanding upon them. I will focus on exploring the development of the fourth principle, the ongoing transformation of life fostered by the network society, but will remain mindful of the first three and may often reflect on them in light of current events, campaigns, products or expressions.

As always, I encourage you to share your response to any post in the comments. You may also contact me through the various links on the right.

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Filed under: Announcements
Posted by: Richard
On: Friday, June 5th

To the readers out there, Blunks is yet again relaunching with a new design and using the Wordpress blogging suite of Content Management Systems – special thanks to Alex for that!

As before, this blog is a personal blog for Richard Nevins, a graduate student in media & communications at the University of Southern California and the London School of Economics. I will take up any areas of interest to me and hopefully select a couple items of interest to you as well!

Please feel free to comment on the posts here, and if you want to contact me, make use of the links on the sidebar. If you think that I am full of it, let me know and we can grow Pinocchio’s nose up there to keep me honest!

Happy reading!

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Filed under: Announcements
Posted by: Richard
On: Wednesday, January 28th