Most people can see this political divide in the mass media as Fox vs. MSNBC, WSJ vs. NYT. The social media only makes these ideological media walls more compartmentalized because any viewpoint now has a voice. One can now consume media from chosen sources that only fit the way they think and view the world.

Then, friend Joe Pryor alerted me to a NYT article that first acknowledges the worrisome trend that people are starting to “live in partisan ghettoes, ignorant about the other side”. It analyzes a study by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business that measured ideological segregation on the Internet, and the conclusions are revealing:

The methodology is complicated, but can be summarized through a geographic metaphor. Think of the Fox News site as Casper, Wyo. If you visited and shook hands with the people reading the site, you’d be very likely to be shaking hands with a conservative. The New York Times site, they suggest, is like Manhattan. If you shook hands with other readers, you’d probably be shaking hands with liberals.

The study measures the people who visit sites, not the content inside.

According to the study, a person who visited only Fox News would have more overlap with conservatives than 99 percent of Internet news users. A person who only went to The Times’s site would have more liberal overlap than 95 percent of users.

But the core finding is that most Internet users do not stay within their communities. Most people spend a lot of time on a few giant sites with politically integrated audiences, like Yahoo News.

But even when they leave these integrated sites, they often go into areas where most visitors are not like themselves. People who spend a lot of time on Glenn Beck’s Web site are more likely to visit The New York Times’s Web site than average Internet users. People who spend time on the most liberal sites are more likely to go to foxnews.com than average Internet users.

In fact, I always liked the idea that Joe, who I could assume was Oklahoma conservative, was always sending me New York Times articles. And I in fact, enjoy watching Fox News just to see them punch holes in our local congresswoman Nancy Pelosi; you learn a lot. The conclusion is if the world is becoming more secularized, it’s not the internet to blame.

RecoverySF.org is set up for citizens to discuss the local issues related to the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA) passed by Congress, also known as the Stimulus Plan. It’s positioned as a bulletin board to solicit citizen opinion.

@SF311 is simply representative of the Twitter feed that we believe will soon replace telephone support for local community services. It’s a great example of using Twitter for asynchronous / real time support and a testament to the utility of Cotweet, an enterprise application that allows multiple city support personnel to reply to requests into @SF311.

Gavin Newsom is taking a page from Barack’s playbook in adopting new social media ideas that could eventually build him a following for his run for California governor.

The Denver Post already plans to start charging for content. Would the overwhelming results of this informal reader poll change their mind? It boils down to, how stupid are they?

This is a followup from yesterday’s article about news feed aggregation – the advent of  “real time” news in the past year with Twitter and micro-blogging citizen journalism has commoditized news content. The public realizes they can find their news anywhere and everywhere online… this perception didn’t exist a year ago.

We’re registering for our next Social Media Marketing workshops starting Friday, May 8 at 10:30pdt / 1:30edt. During these sessions, we help build Breaking News City sites for our clients. Register at http://DomusConsultingGroup.com/101h.

Breaking News City Sites:

• London
• New York
• Orange County
• Los Angeles
• San Francisco
• Boston

In this light, we’ve changed our mission statement on our Domus Consulting Group website. One thing that differentiates us as media consultants is our proven ability to train organizations from top to bottom on strategic social media marketing. Management often has problems with translating this vision when few of their employees are even on Facebook, let alone Twitter.

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Domus Consulting Group’s mission as management consultants is to work with corporations and organizations in developing social media sales and marketing strategies that extend to every employee and business partner. Since 2007, we have been leaders in developing new social media constructs that have been put into practical and successful use by the technology, the real estate and the media industries.

We achieve the following objectives with our clients, the first four steps often within the span of 1-2 months:

1) PLANNING: Strategy development on how best to position company within both traditional industrial media and the new social media worlds.

2) MISSION: Brand client company as the “Zappos ” of its industry by developing a systematic focus on customer support and interaction via the social media.

3) EXECUTION: Develop a massive referral-based networking system within the organization and extend that to the customer base for business development.

4) ADOPTION: Train large teams of employees live and via webinars to systematically and efficiently build their social networks, and learn 2.0 marketing protocols.

5) LEVERAGE: Develop unique applications that distribute and share essential real time information to corporate clients. (Example: Real time local advertising – a new business model)

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Our Management Philosophy ( a slideshow we originally posted summer 2008)

Rafe Needleman reports that half his walk-up pitches were Twitter-related. Conceptually Twitter is so simple, the new apps built around Twitter also seem like they were created on a cocktail napkin. What would really rock the Twitter and social media boat would be the launch of counterintuitive applications that used Twitter as, say, an advertising vehicle (gasp), especially when everybody is now cringing about how Twitter is being overrun by MLM and spamming mega-following bots.

My take on the future of Twitter: The Twitter user base will begin to compartmentalize based on the various ways Twitter is used. Twitter apps for advertising will flourish because it is a powerful branding medium. Twitter spammers are easy to identify and may eventually segregate into their own societies like ghettoes. Other societies based on industry and geography will become well defined. Twitterers who want to use Twitter with small groups for more intimate communication will continue to do so.

In other words, Twitter will embrace laissez faire. As Twitter grows and user follower bases expand from 100’s to 1,000’s to 10,000’s organically (or not, depending upon the user’s preference), everybody will begin to mind their own business. Twitter societies will start mirroring the virtual worlds of Second Life, where like-minded participants find each other for whatever… and others don’t seem to notice the bizarre stuff unless they go slumming and friending themselves into these worlds.

President Obama staged an 80-minute interactive town hall meeting this morning at 11:30 EDT. In the span of an hour or so, he received 92,000 questions online, from which 3.6 million votes were cast voting up/down those questions.

Idea: his administration should create a “White House Connect” application based on a white label Google Friend or Facebook Connect type system. White House Connect could be set up as a governmental social network, that could be extended on national, state and local levels.

Benefits of an Obama Induced Online Society

President Obama has the opportunity to push American society online, with the following benefits to his wired administration:

1. Easier to broadcast messages to a tech savvy media and public, constituents who likely comprise a hotbed of Obama supporters.
2. Engages the public and gives them a feeling of connectedness with his administration.
3. Positions Obama as a populist president using a variety of media, from Jay Leno, to the internet, to communicate his messages as a “real” person, not somebody isolated in an inner sanctum.

In a similar vein, the South Korean government pushed its citizens after the 1998 Asian Financial Crisis to adopt broadband and the Internet, and became a global Internet powerhouse.

1. EXPRESS GOOD WILL – Following your followers (unless they are truly unsavory) acknowledges their existence and is a good will gesture. You never know whether a stranger is going to turn out to be a great network contact…
2. ACKNOWLEDGE – If you follow somebody on Twitter you would like to develop a relationship with, retweet their good tweets and/or add commentary to them. They will notice.
3. COMMUNICATE – Once your retweets get their attention, start participating in their conversations.
4. SHARE INTIMACY – Be on the lookout for matching interests. Sharing arcane references puts you in a special “club”. I like to share the secret that I know jazz and salsa music, and basketball to those who can appreciate it.
5. MAKE BUSINESS CONTACT – Once you develop a Twitter rapport, make a simple proposition. Tweet with a request for 5 minutes over the phone for introductions. The proposition is best an idea that you’d like feedback on, or a question that your new contact can answer… not a blunt “Can you help me?”
6. PREPARE RELATIONSHIP – When you ask for the 5 minutes, also send/tweet a link to your LinkedIn profile to the contact to show you mean business. LinkedIn works like a resume, and your contact may intuit the reason for your show of interest.
7. DON’T BE PUSHY – Do not create obligations at the beginning of a relationship (a standard social rule) – no asking for retweets, follows, or introductions to others. Let your contacts offer them.
8. BUILD BY ADDING VALUE – Continue offering streams of ideas and links to appropriate, interesting articles to your new contacts. Build the relationship!
9. STAY SOCIAL – The nice thing about Twitter is that interactions only take minutes, phone calls and emails take more thought and time.
10. REALLY MEET! – Be sure to meet face-to-face when a conference, Tweet-Up or other opportunity exists.

However, many use Twitter like an IM tool to keep track of their closer friends and others they find interesting. They complain that following more than a certain number – 20, 50, 100, 500? – they can’t readily digest the conversation threads. Well, duh.

Silicon Valley Insider’s Henry Blodget’s Facebook account is clogged with friend requests. He’s given up on using Facebook to keep up with his closer circle of friends due to the massive noise emanating from friends he doesn’t know. He also knows that he doesn’t want to insult fans and well-wishers by “unfriending” everybody he doesn’t know. So he’s made the decision to “friend” everybody and relegate Facebook to being a big fan repository. His request to Facebook:

Please develop a new feature called “Personal Friends” or “Work Friends” or “Extra Special Friends” or “BFFs” or “Friends You Want To Hear Meaningless Trivia About All Day Long.”  Please give me the ability to put friends in these groups without telling them I have done so (and, more importantly, without telling the friends I haven’t put in the groups that I haven’t.  I REALLY don’t want to offend anyone).

Please develop this feature soon, so I can be friends with everyone who wants to be my friend and yet can also follow my actual friends without pissing all my other friends off.  If you do that, by the way, I’ll finally also be able to just unplug LinkedIn.

Alan Wolk states the obvious has an excellent article pointing out how the new wave of MLM and SEO spammers and even a litany of social media experts that have invaded Twitter airwaves is making it exasperating to read through the Twitter public timeline. Sure, massive networks will have trash due to the low barriers to building these networks. My advice? Ignore them, block the trash.

MY SOLUTION TO ALL THIS

First, nobody’s complaining about developing a massive following on Twitter, Facebook or Friendfeed, or they would be “blocking” any followers they don’t know. Ergo, it’s good to have followers. Simple fact: you can get your message out (provided it’s not couched in spammy language) more broadly and virally with a larger network.

Second, I don’t think it matters whether you follow 200, 1,000, or 10,000 people. It’s still difficult to follow those who are closest to you, so don’t even try to doing this on Twitter public timeline. Use Twitter tools to follow your intimate network.

Ergo, since it doesn’t matter how many you follow after a certain number, why not follow or friend them all? That was Henry Blodget’s conclusion. Henry’s suggestion about grouping friends on Facebook can already be done on Twitter using Group Settings on Tweetdeck. I find it easy to follow my closest 100 (and like Henry I won’t say who they are) there. It’s such a simple solution.

Third, if you subscribe to the second corollary that it doesn’t matter how many you follow if you’re not tracking them on the public timeline, why put off your followers/fans? They could be following you because they adore you. A simple “follow” click keeps them loyal, how does that hurt you?

Sure, we’re adults… we all know that unfriending is not personal, but it is clearly not positive for relationship building. Some folks like Perry Belcher think it’s snobbery not to follow your fans back. (Funny video link).

The Real Estate Example

Many real estate professionals use Twitter and Facebook to develop a community following. Frankly, any stranger (yes, strangers are prospects too!) who follows/friends a real estate agent may be interested in their commentary and contemplating a home purchase. Would any agent in real life tell a prospect: “I know you’re watching me and potentially looking to hire me as your agent, but frankly I don’t know you and don’t think you are interesting, so I will unfriend you. Come back to me when you tell me you are a real prospect and I can make money from you”.

Since a real estate agent can’t tell who is a prospect on Twitter, why unfriend them? Just friend them, and ignore them until they come out of the woodwork with intention. It’s not only real estate, anybody selling services should be aware of the negative connotations of unfriending a client. Henry Blodget finally figured that one out.

Related article: The Politics of Unfollowing

I sometimes ruminate over new concepts for 24 hours to figure out their implications rather than jot down a quick “yowza” blog post. CNN.com and Facebook’s integrated coverage of the Obama Inaugural yesterday was striking because it was the first time I saw all my Facebook friends come to life in a unified, mostly coherent conversation.

In social network applications like Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook, conversations are siloed. I don’t feel a part of the ecosystem until somebody or I start a conversation. An event like the Inauguration lays down a contextual foundation for the conversation so everybody feels involved. It’s the reason why we go to live sporting or concert events – Facebook provided a proxy for “being there” by gathering all the people I know (at least on Facebook) in one room.

This is one of the powerful applications of Facebook Connect that will surely be used in connection with other events, live or programmed (as in movie watching), to provide the same social experience by proxy. Yes, the conversations may be boring or obnoxious, but that’s like any other cocktail party. I think this is addictive.