#140conf: Day 1, Pt. 3

In these two talks we got a peek at two prevalent themes of the day – the way we receive and evaluate real time information, and the way location increasingly plays a part in our interactions with social media.

9:20 Evolution of the Realtime Web – John Borthwick, CEO of Betaworks (@johnborthwick)

Real businesses emerging on social media. Talked about Groupon on FaceBook – that it’s a multi-million dollar business.

“In fact, only 20% of tweets reach 140chars. Average length is 77 chars, 55% of tweets are at 80chars. People are clearly thinking short, and thinking of a single tweet – a single idea, really. When you strip out hashtags, only 13% are above 120chars.” Missed the percentage of people with over 100 followers.

“The half-life of [the average] tweet is 4mins.”

740,000 bit.ly links clicked while he was talking, +1,500 a heartbeat! A lot of interesting statistics from John – 50% of people talking about the weather, and the most common hashtag still being tributes to Michael Jackson.

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Jeff’s intro talking about location-based apps, how it’s a powerful thing to opt in to reporting your place.

9:30 Evolution of Locations and Places – Dan Harple, Executive Chairman, GyPSii

Dan was there at the start of real time and straming video on the web, developing and eventually selling “Cool Talk” to Netscape – remember that?! After another company development cycle he absconded with his family to Holland.

In the US, we’re “boxed in” – by our cars, windows – all of our portals on the world. In Holland – on a bike – it’s open, immersive, in 3d. There are traffic jams OF BIKES!

He learned in his world travels that mobility is “a much bigger deal” in other countries, but he felt disconnected from real time data. Talking about searching Google on his phone, and “only getting websites” – rather than news related to the time and place of his search.

The whole talk is support by a simple slide show of photos of people on vehicles – cars and bikes. Driving home how real-time and real-space cultures are depending on how they travel. “The future of connectivity is [totally] mobile. Mobile growth has eclipses PC growth.”

Information you receive should be about who you are, who you know, and where you are.

(This was a really interesting talk, though halfway through I would have told you it was slow. It was designed so that the realization came at the end, having heard all of the pieces of the “Real Time Digital Ecology.” I’d love to work in the industry of exploring in real time.)