Here’s a test for you.

Read this post.

Read it in its entirety.

In one go.

Without breaking to check email or Twitter.

If you’re anyway engaged with what Forrester would hate me calling “social media”, reading a post of that length, in the context of everything else that you could (and tell yourself should) be reading, in the context of everything that you should be doing, ain’t easy.

And that’s the whole point of the post.

And I quote.

“For the last couple of years I’ve jacked in to this increasing bit rate of downloadable intellectual breadth and I’ve traded away the slow conscious depth of my previous life. And you know what? Now I’m losing my self. I used to be a free standing independent cerebral cortex. My own self. But not any more. Now I’m a dumb node in some uber-net’s basal ganglia. Tweet, twitch, brief repose; repeat. My autonomic nervous system is plugged in, in charge, and interrupt ready while the gray wrinkly stuff is white knuckled from holding on.”

Breadth versus depth of information and knowledge.

The post argues that we are at the point where this is an either/or decision. If you wish to retain any vestige of “normal” life then staying in touch both broadly AND deeply is out of the question.

I made no resolutions for 2010.

But I took a complete break from blog reading, blog posting, and Twittering over the festive period.

And, as a result of so doing, gave some thought to this breadth versus depth issue.

And, as a result of so doing, decided to re-balance my approach to all things e-social.

In favour of more depth.

The fact that Jim Stogdill’s post seems to have touched a nerve (broadly and deeply as it happens) is indicative of the fact that many people are feeling the same way.

For the time being this information overload, this Information Surfeit Disorder, may only affect the geeky few. But, over time, it will also affect the (increasingly socially engaged) many.

And so we need to contend with this issue both personally and professionally.

We need to wrestle not only with how we manage our personal consumption of information.

But also how we manage our clients’ content and campaigns in the context of this overload.

We have soft launched You Are What You App. The premise of this simple site is that your choice of iPhone applications probably reveals something about you.

And so it would seem. It’s the iPhone equivalent of having LLoyd Grossman looking through your keyhole.

The site appeals both to the iPhone exhibitionist and to the iPhone voyeur.

At the time of writing it’s early stages in terms of the number of active participants, but the average time on site is 7 minutes 30 seconds, suggesting that people are enjoying having a good nosey at other people’s apps.

I’ve already downloaded a few new gems as a result of seeing and reading about the apps that other people can’t live without.

There’s Byline, a mobile Google Reader app, which is perfect for keeping up with RSS feeds on the train.

Instapaper is an interesting looking application that allows you to save and read web pages offline at your convenience.

Around Me elegantly answers the question “where is the nearest x, y or z?”

And people are clearly sufficiently impressed with productivity applications like Omnifocus and Things to part with decent amounts of cash for them.

If you have an iPhone and a Twitter account please do add your apps to the site.

You Are What You App is our latest “hobby” project, following in the footsteps of WeMet for EdTwestival and EdTwinge.

As mentioned in previous posts, we helped Philippa Gregory and her team to implement the Twitter version of her latest historical novel, The White Queen.

We developed a strategy for how best to publish the 250 tweets over seven days on Twitter itself.

And we developed a rich, immersive Flash application that lives on Philippa’s site that allows fans to view the tweets uninterrupted and at their leisure.

Twitter Flash App

The good news is that the book went to Number 1 on The Times bestseller list in the UK after only 5 days on sale, and achieved the equivalent number 2 position in the United States.

And here in November the number of views of the Flash application continues to grow month on month. The application is still delivering (increasing) value from tweets that were posted 3 months ago.

All good stuff.

(Image borrowed from Jessica Smith)

Herewith a list of lists and interesting initiatives by financial services organisations in social spaces. Part of an ongoing planning project. I’d be really grateful if any readers who know of other examples could include links in a comment. Thank you.

Jeremiah Owyang (Web Strategist) – ongoing list of social media efforts from financial services all and sundry.

Jeremiah Owyang again – another Web Strategy blog post with additional examples.

Mashable – 5 ways banks are using social media.

Net Banker – Banks and credit unions on Twitter.

Visible Banking – Not very pleasing on the eye, but incredibly comprehensive list of organisations and social media activities across various platforms in various countries.

Insurance Networking News – “Social technology strategies for insurance and other ‘boring’ brands.”

Wells Fargo – Social media case study presentation on Slideshare.

First Direct – ‘Little Black Book’ by customers for customers.

Groundswell -  Young & Free Alberta case study on this Forrester blog

Hope this is helpful. Once again, thanks in anticipation for any further examples.

Live tweeting of Philippa Gregory’s new novel ended on 17th August. To coincide with the book’s international publication date, the following day we put live a bespoke Flash application on Philippa’s website that allows fans to read the tweets uninterrupted and at their leisure.

The White Queen on Twitter.

As mentioned in a previous post, we have been helping Philippa Gregory and her team with the launch of her latest novel on Twitter.

The first phase of the project has been the release of the c.250 tweets over the seven days leading up to the global publication date for the novel on August 18. At the time of writing this post, the final installment of tweets is due to be released from 5pm GMT this evening. The tweets have been published via the Twitter api using a specially written php/MYSQL broadcast system.

The project has attracted the best part of 600 followers who, based on their spontaneous reactions, have largely enjoyed the experience. Here, in the form of a status update picture essay, is a representative, warts-and-all sample of the @messages that have been sent to Elizabeth Woodville – the main protagonist in the book and the source of the White Queen tweets.

Elizabeth’s opening tweet…

Almost immediately fans comment on, and engage with, what is seen to be the “racy” nature of the tweets…

With roughly 33 tweets going out each day, the frequency of posting was not to everyone’s taste. Such a reaction was probably inevitable and, to be honest, we saw less of this kind of reaction than we had expected…

Some people clearly became actively engaged with the Twitter persona of Ms. Woodville…

Some started to question the point of the exercise – isn’t this giving away the plot?

But such responses were in the minority…

The dust has yet to settle on this project, and Phase 2 kicks off tomorrow (18th) with the addition of a bespoke Flash application to the Philippa Gregory site. This application will allow fans to read the tweets uninterrupted and at their leisure in a more user-friendly environment than that provided by Twitter itself. We’ve learned a lot already from this project that will hopefully be applied to further experiments in the future.

EdTwinge is a Twitter-based, crowdsourced, realtime Edinburgh Fringe rating application.

It monitors tweets that mention any of the acts at the 2009 Fringe Festival and/or the most commonly used Fringe hashtags. It then matches the content of these tweets against an extensive database of positive and negative words and phrases.

The site publishes two scores for each act at the Fringe. The first is “Noise”. This is simply the number of tweets that have mentioned the act in an Edinburgh/Fringe context. The second, and more important, measure is what we call “Karma”.

A full, geek-friendly explanation of how Karma is calculated can be found on the Edtwinge site. But basically it is a measure of the net positive sentiment about each act, which is based on a robust statistical analysis. This statistical analysis ensures that the Karma score is as reliable as possible. For instance an act mentioned in, say, five tweets, all of which are positive will have a significantly lower karma score than an act mentioned positively in 60 tweets out of 70. Phrases are prioritised over words, so “shit-hot” would be correctly identified as a positive statement for instance.

The top ten tables for the Fringe as a whole, and for each genre of show, are primarily derived from Karma. Noise only comes into play if two shows have the same Karma rating. In this instance the act with the higher noise score would rank above the other.

The site also allows the user to search and view karma and noise scores for any act, and to view in chronological order the verbatim tweets that underpin these.

EdTwinge is also the result of a garage-band style collaboration with some very talented, sparky and creative people.

Mike Coulter – social media exponent at Digital Agency (the original idea was his).

Andrew Burnett – another social media exponent and expert traffic driver.

Jim Wolff – digital misfit (his words not mine) who joined Leith part way through the project.

There is no paying client behind EdTwinge. It’s been a fun and fruitful diversion from the day job for those of us lucky enough to be involved. And what we’ve learned about tag-team style collaboration, baton-passing Twitter account shifts, and fleet-of-foot digital seeding and amplification has been as valuable as the technical, under the bonnet of Twitter stuff.

Early days yet (3 and a half days into the Fringe at the time of writing), but there has already been a significant amount of positive commentary and the site appears to be performing well. A big thank you to our friends at Stripe for securing some really excellent profile for the project.

I’ll post a more in-depth analysis of results and learning in a couple of weeks but average time on site is currently running at over 4 minutes on the back of an average of 5.22 pages viewed per visit according to Google Analytics.

Follow us (EdTwinge) on Twitter for regular updates. And/or embed your own EdTwinge Top 10 widget, like this one that we prepared earlier…

We’ve been working with Philippa Gregory (author of The Other Boleyn Girl) and her publisher, Simon and Schuster, on a pioneering project to launch her new novel in Twitter format. This is a first for an international bestselling author of Philippa’s stature. She has reinterpreted the novel as a series of roughly 250 tweets from the book’s main character.

Elizabeth Woodville is The White Queen. Born originally into the House of Lancaster, she seduces and marries the Yorkist King Edward IV. Having risen to royal status by virtue of her beauty she has to use her guile, and the odd bit of witchcraft, to rise to the challenges presented by her precarious position.

Or, in Philippa’s words…

As the examples below demonstrate, what she has to say goes some way beyond the what-I-had-for-breakfast banality that characterises some Twitter exchanges.

If my mother were not a witch, and the descendant of the goddess Melusina, I think none of this could ever have happened to me. But it did.

It has to be secret. His friends have a wedding planned for him and I am a nobody. We marry in secret and we bed in a hurry. I adore him.

At dawn Edward’s army rises from mist, like an army of ghosts, and charges up the slopes to Warwick’s army of Lancaster to vicious fighting.

George, the fool, chooses a fool’s death. He wants to be drowned in a barrel of wine: in his chamber at the Tower.

The project has presented creative challenges to the author and some practical challenges to us in executing the idea. This is Philippa Gregory talking about adapting tens of thousands of carefully crafted words of prose into the 140 character format of Twitter…

“Tweets are a discipline, rather like a haiku, and the shortness of the sentence gives each one a rhythm which is really interesting for prose.

“It was more like writing poetry than prose. And some of the tweets seem to me to be more arresting than the prose of the book. I especially like the first one…
If my mother were not a witch, and the descendant of the goddess Melusina, I think none of this could ever have happened to me. But it did.

“I like this so much, I have re-used it when describing the novel, it doesn’t appear in the novel but only in the Twitter version, but it encapsulates for me the mood of the novel, its dreamlike quality, the character of the heroine and invites you to read more. I am certainly going to write creative tweets again.”

So much for the creative challenges and opportunities. Blonde has been charged with making the project happen in practical terms. And this is by no means a trivial exercise.

Clearly Twitter afficionados will want to follow the project on Twitter, or their Twitter client of choice. But Twitter is an inherently noisy channel and maintaining the narrative thread in amongst tweets from everyone else that the reader is following isn’t easy. Also anyone coming to Elizabeth’s profile mid-way through, or after, the event will be presented with the tweets in reverse order – i.e. the latest tweet first – and back to front isn’t the best way to read a novel, whatever its format. So, whilst launching the novel on Twitter is incredibly of-the-moment, Twitter itself isn’t necessarily the ideal channel from a user perspective in which to follow 250 consecutive 140 character episodes.

This is why the project is being implemented in two stages.

Fans will be able to follow @ElizWoodville on Twitter between 11th & 17th August. The tweets will be posted between 17.00 and 20.00 GMT each day, a window that is designed to make the content accessible to both UK and US audiences.

Then, on August 18th, the global publication date for the book, a bespoke Flash application will be launched on the Philippa Gregory website. The application will provide a rich, immersive experience which will allow users to read the tweets uninterrupted and at their leisure. The above visual is a snapshot from the application.

At the time of writing we’re working with the publisher to seed the project to various communities – fans of Philippa Gregory, the publishing industry and the digital/social media scene. The hope is that the Twitter experiment will introduce new readers to Philippa, but already there is evidence of Philippa introducing new people to Twitter.

Watch this space for further learning once the project goes live.

The reflex reaction to being presented with good content is to share it. Generosity, mutuality and sharing are the engines of social media.

But yesterday an un-named Blonde colleague brought to our attention a good idea.

Our collective initial reaction was to spread the word. Tweet and retweet.

Then it dawned on us that this was actually a very, very good idea. An idea that we can adapt and apply to our own wicked ends. An idea whose potential would probably be spotted by others. And we’d hate to be beaten to it.

Too good to tweet in fact.

(Until later when we’ll obviously give credit where credit’s due).

Meanwhile we feel a bit like this.

Image borrowed from DutchImage.

Ever come across anything that was too good to tweet?

The whole Facebook username landgrab, goldrush thing in pictures…