Burdseed

Do social networks mark the end to endings?

Paul Ford argues in this week’s New York magazine that the Facebook wall (and by extension, the Twitter stream and Google+ conversation) are bringing an end to drama, narrative, and literary closure: “The tide brings in status updates; the tide takes them out.”

This is definitely a central design (or failing) of today’s social networks. However, it’s not necessarily a preference of broader society or the always-connected consumer. People crave entertainment, and entertainment comes from drama. Curation of social feeds, algorithmic or otherwise, will increasingly need to extend beyond the basic filtering of LOLcats and checkins. Ultimately, social applications will provide consumers with context and weave together coherent stories using social feeds and content snippets and traditional dramatic devices, like beginnings and endings.

There’s a lot of bad connected device analysis out there.

As more folks jump on Twitter and Google+ and on the microblogging platforms and get interested in emerging areas like social TV and second screen applications, I’m seeing a lot more longer-form content get published and posted on the social networks.

Unfortunately, a lot of this content isn’t very good and, in some cases, it’s flat out wrong or misleading. Since I read much it anyways as part of my daily routine, and a number of my twitter followers have told me that they appreciate curation in these areas, I’m going to attempt to highlight the better articles and posts. I’ll do this a couple of times a week, if not daily.

Most of these posts will be culled from the sources collected on the right sidebar. If you notice anyone missing who you think I should be following, please ping me.

This is Burdseed 2.0.

Burdseed 1.0 was my tumblog, which I’ve abandoned in favor of this longer, more flexible, more lasting format. I plan to continue to use Twitter and Google+ for news and business conversations and will continue to use Facebook for family, friend, and classmate stuff. But I’m moving away from Posterous and Tumblr. Consider them a casualty of the rise of Google+.

As a result of business and family commitments, it’s been a while since I’ve sat down and written in longer form. Now that my current startup project has emerged out of stealth mode, I hope to write one or two posts a week on a number of topics that seem a bit underserved in the blogosphere, interest me, or relate to my current professional activities.

Mostly that will mean riffing about things that are happening in the areas of social TV, smart TV, digital media, and the connected home. Plus, strategy, business building, and change issues related to these areas and observations about products, deals, and M&A.