She struts onto stage like a resplendent peacock. The crowd applauds, the lights dim, and as the shadows envelope the great cavern of the Opera House, her fingers gently caress the first keys. Then, there in the darkness, a single, tiny light. Followed by another. And another, and still more – tiny beacons held aloft throughout the multitude…

No, they weren’t lighters, held up in praise of Tori Amos suddenly performing an 80’s power ballad; they were god damn mobile phones.

Now, I know I use my iPhone too much, I’m willing to admit I’m addicted. While we waited for the concert to start I held my phone above my head to try and get some reception to see if I’d had a response to an email I’d sent earlier. However, once the lights go out, that’s where it’s meant to end, because there’s one simple truth – all you’re doing is wasting your time and pissing people off behind you.

If you have a camera phone, most likely a shot of a woman far away on a barely lit stage is going to look like absolute rubbish. It’s not worth it. Perhaps you have a better, digital camera and it’s the LCD display I can see glowing – still, why both taking pictures that do nothing to capture being there, but distract you and others from enjoying what you paid to bloody experience? The music.

Don’t get me started on flashes. People, much like your Neanderthal cousins sitting in football stadiums and using flashes, all you’re going to get is extremely bright shots of the back of somebody’s head surrounded by blackness. The space it too large for a flash and your ignorance makes me hate you. For the record, there was a woman sitting behind me at the Tori concert whose camera I almost confiscated after numerous blinding flashes. (Thankfully, holding my hand in the ‘giving the finger’ position behind my head, which she could only see in the flash exposed preview image, seemed to convey the message to stop)

Now, this could just be a rant about social etiquette. I know there are plenty of people who took photos last night who will be so chuffed that they can show off to their friends how close they were as Ms Amos played two pianos at once. There is the bigger issue though.

Earlier this year I went on a round the world trip. The ability by tourists, particularly Americans, although I don’t want to signal them out, to ignore the ‘No Flash Photography’ signs is mind boggling. In the Catacombs beneath Paris, which are filled with the skeletal remains of thousands of people, it’s just as much about respect as it is about damaging art and antiques through the exposure to flash.

It all came to the head, no pun intended, in the Louvre.

During the days I spent wandering the museum in total awe I witnessed a group of College students dare a girl to fellate one of the Ancient Greek statues, which she did with gusto, leaving a lipstick ring on the stone. We had an *ahem* heated exchange before they left and I sent security after them, but it didn’t leave me in the best mood when I ran into a group of American tourists, queuing up to stand one by one in front of the Venus de Milo to have their picture taken. I pointed out you’re not meant to be using flash photography to the woman taking the pictures, only to be asked how else was she meant to get a picture? When I questioned why she needed a picture at all she spat back:

“I paid to get in here and I’m gonna get my moneys worth.”

This for me strikes at the heart of the issue. While less burlesque, the woman’s attitude was similar to the girl giving the stone blow job - I have a right to try and own this experience.

In the case of the photos, what is the point? There are better representations of the Venus available in the gift shop and online. The evidence of you standing, arms and expression limp, like a fat, consumer drone adds nothing to you, and it certainly adds nothing to the Venus herself.

We’ve become so obsessed with capturing and recording experience that we often ignore what we actually came for: the experience. To bring it all back, whether you like her music of not Tori Amos is an amazing performer who exudes an energy that just can’t be captured, but video or audio.  Rather than being in such a rush to capture, catalogue and store, why not experience the moment and then let it fuel your own creativity – write a song or a story, paint or simply tell others about how it made you feel. The copy/paste, Xerox approach to culture leaves you with nothing more than quickly degrading copy that takes up space.

I’ve often abandoned this blog except when I want a large rant, like yesterday’s retweet discussion or my look at the VAustralia promotion. If you want my day to day thoughts, there’s my Twitter account after all. That said, I want to make an effort to update this more often and am working on a redesign. (Yes, I know, it’s ugly as sin. So is your mum. Back off)

Today I just want to highlight what continues to annoy the crap out of me: the misconception of what social media is. I’m not taking a high and mighty view, just simply stating a fact. I’m increasingly sick of people thinking it begins with Facebook and Twitter and ends with Flickr and YouTube, if you’re feeling adventurous.

It’s like going to a party. Yes, I can help you set up a Twitter account and company Facebook profile just like I can help you pick out an outfit for the party. The thing is, unless you want to learn more, you risk getting dressed up and then not going anywhere. Just sitting at home, alone, in the dark, wearing a (currently) trendy outfit.

If this is all you want , fine, but you’ll miss all the cake.

We’ve all been there. It’s Christmas day and a relative has told you they got the present you’ve been craving. You rip the paper with your teeth only instead of the latest video game, Bonestorm, you find a copy of Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge. Everybody’s watching so you smile awkwardly and say how it’s exactly what you wanted. Worst thing is they think they got it right…

I’ve just finished reading Evan Williams post on “Why Retweet works the way it does” and felt the need to get some ideas down on why I disagree with some points. You should read it – it’s worth it, and a great outliner of Twitter’s reasoning.

(As a disclaimer, I don’t yet have the retweet functionality turned on on my account, but being a Social Media Douchebag, I’ve read countless blogs and tweets about the service. Hell, I’ve watched a video. Of a new feature. On a microblogging site. And now I’m writing about that feature at 3 AM. Someone shoot me now.)

On topic though, and as hinted at by this posts heading, I have some reservations regarding Twitter’s native implementation of the Retweet. I’m going to focus on two main points from Evan’s post.

Redundant redundancy

“Redundancy. If five people you follow retweet the same thing, you get five copies, which can be useful but is a lot of noise. This comes up even more in search. Popular users can get retweeted enough to saturate a search query … because they’re [now] trackable, we can take care of the redundancy problem: You will only get the first copy of something retweeted multiple times by people you follow.” - Evan Williams

I understand Evan’s point on this. I also understand that Twitter, and certainly search results, can become cluttered when there is a popular message that is being retweeted. Yes, it can be a pain, and yes it’s annoyed me at times.

However, what this solution does is take away one of the benefits from retweets. People new to Twitter often ask me how I follow so many people. The answer is I don’t. I don’t read everything, and I’m happy to tell people to let Twitter wash past you – if you miss something it doesn’t matter, because if it’s important you’ll likely see it later.

The problem is that the way you’ll often see something of import that scrolls by too quickly is by retweets. Many times when I catch news, links or just an funny message it won’t be because I saw the original message, or the first retweet, but rather the second, third or twentieth. Each increases the chance of that tweet reaching more people.

Does this sometimes lead to increasing the noise in the signal/noise ratio? Sure, sometimes, but I think if you’re following people who benefit your experience the good will outweigh the bad. I know that, as it stands, I’m more likely to miss messages I would like to see if people adopt the official retweet function over the current RT/Via/Hat Tip system.

Attribution smattribution

“The attribution problem: In order to get rid of the attribution confusion, in your timeline we show the avatar and username of the original author of the tweet—with the person who retweeted it (whom you actually follow) in the metadata underneath.” - Evan Williams

Much as with the redundancy, the new system, which will have retweeted messages appear like regular tweets in your timeline with the retweet info below in the metadata along with “posted at” and “in reply to”, ignores one of the benefits of the retweet, which is discovering new people.

If I see one of the people I follow who I like and trust retweet someone in the old “RT @ExampleGuy” style, there’s a high chance that, if I like what I see, I’ll click through and check out the person’s profile and possibly follow them.

I think that, as it currently stands and unless apps make it very clear through colour coding etc, that we’re more likely to miss, unless we look much more closely than before, how a message appeared in our timelines. This means we’re less likely to pick up on that tweet as a ‘gateway’ to other users, rather accept it as something that belongs naturally in our timelines. Evan discusses that having the profile pic of the user who is retweeting is irrelevant to the message, but I disagree – due to the fact I’m guaranteed to be following the retweeter this is an endorsement of the message, meaning I’m much more likely to read it.

This now strays into personal branding. I often advise people that, if they want to engage on Twitter, to have a noticeable avatar and change it as little as possible – the avatar of someone I don’t follow will not likely set off any recognition in my mind, certainly not enough for me to peer closely at the metadata.

What does this mean?

The long and the short of this is that Twitter have NOT added Retweet functionality – they’ve added a microcommenting system akin to Facebook’s ‘Like’ option.

At the Social Media Club Sydney before last Russ Weakley (@russmaxdesign) spoke about integrating microcomments into the redesign of the Australian Museum’s site. One of the best comments of the night, which I hope people took away, was Russ’ discussion on levels of commitment – those who won’t write a comment will participate in a microcomment which will often lead to deeper interaction.

That is to say, I like microcomments. I think they’re neato. I think they’re just swell. What I don’t think they are are retweets. Sure, it’s a nice addition to look at a tweet you wrote and see all the people who liked that update, and I’m sure many people will use the new function more than they would normally retweet due to the lower commitment and the fact that retweets won’t double up. Hell, I’ll be much more likely to throw my two cents in, knowing that it won’t clog up my follower’s timelines with blue Batman logos.

While this is all good, it does however ignore, as I covered above, the functionality which retweets currently serve. If you follow me you’ll know I most often use the “(Via @Example Guy)” structure, and often rewrite/add to the message before the link or important info – this removes the redundancy issue, while still achieving the things I like about retweets.

Microcomments work on Facebook as it’s a site one explores. Facebook remains an active, destination type experience while Twitter has become a more passive, companion type service that many people have always open through an app. People don’t dig back through their Twitter stream, meaning endorsements of a message Twitter has determined you must have already seen are redundant.

I have two final points:

1) There is lots of things I like about he way Twitter are integrating retweets – making them trackable and finding a way around the quickly expanding tweets is a great idea.

2) I’m not worried – all the current retweet structure, like the @ replies before it, came from the community deciding on standards and solving issues without Twitter’s help. If people don’t like this, I’m sure the users will come up with the solution.

In short (and I realise the foolishness of writing that at the end of what is now a two page blog post) I think it’s great that Twitter is constantly looking to upgrade it’s service – the addition of Lists, Connections and now retweets show a great commitment to improving the experience. I just think that, like when we’re handed a brightly coloured package from an elderly relative who really tried their best, we need to prepare ourselves for the fact – the ball is in the parking lot.