On Friday, I released Freedom, software that fights the oppression of the internet. Incredibly, through the power of del.icio.us, Reddit, Twitter, blogs and endless Tumblr’s, Freedom has spread widely, with tens of thousands of views. Even more incredibly, I received a donation for my efforts, proving that Freedom is truly on the march. Here’s some of my favorite Freedom coverage:
- Reddit – Freedom: Stop yourself from doing unproductive things. Great comments here, but the winner is “This software won’t stop me from staring out of the window.”
- Signal Vs. Noise. An honor to be on 37 Signals awesome blog.
- Geekculture and MacUser blog about Freedom.
- Robsoft asks: Could this be THE productivity enhancement tool of the decade?
- In Italian!
- All blogosphere reactions here (Technorati) and here (Google)
And while most traffic to Freedom came in from the web or blogs, a substantial bit of Freedom’s traffic and buzz came from Twitter (which I was able to track via Tweetscan’s great, real-time analytics).
Techcrunch and I agree that smaller, more personal networks are the next wave. This has large implications for social (viral) content distribution. First a caveat: By volume, blogs are still king. However, compared to blogs, with their monolith long-post form, and invisible audience, these “closer” networks better fit social content. What do people want to do on the internet? They want to share links. Twitter and Tumblr are precisely tailored to link-based message passing (the fuel of viral traffic), aligning perfectly with our desires.
The real value of “close” networks, in my opinion, is knowledge of one’s audience. Being able to look at one’s Twitter followers and know who is reading you is incredibly powerful, if for no other reason than the milieu of sharing is pre-established. Ever notice how people on Twitter don’t adopt personas? Knowing one’s audience frees users to create as themselves, which is the ultimate sustainable model. The fact that viral content has moved into these close networks is very significant – and we’ll only see more of it going forward.
