The Power of the Audience
February 13, 2010
- As I write this, the Twittersphere is going through its annual love/hate paroxysms about TED. Every year, the conference seems even more an event perfectly calibrated to inflame the bloggerati: Inarguably great presentations combined with unrepentantly exclusionary structure. A humanitarian aesthetic that shrouds a blatantly classist participation model. But what most vexes outsiders (including myself; I've never attended, though I've been invited to pay 2/3 the cost to attend one of their remote TV viewings of the event) is the sense of collective delusion that seems to overcome attendees, who fawn over even the least of the talks. It's sort of like Steve Jobs' famous Reality Distortion Field, but on more of a peer-to-peer basis. I like the idea of TED, and the people who run it, and the presentations it generates — but what's up with the groupthink?
- The New York Times reveals the teenage founder of random video chat phenomenon Chatroulette. Though the site's still new (and controversial) enough that Wikipedia's editors have thus-far decided it's not worthy of note, it's inarguably struck a chord, with a noticeably larger impact in media-fixated NYC than tech-focused San Francisco. Though the site can definitely be seen as creepy, people also seem mesmerized and intoxicated by the idea of connecting with strangers in such a visceral, immediate way.
- One of my favorite startups (naturally, part of our burgeoning NYC tech scene) is Chartbeat, which recently explained the crucial distinction that realtime analytics are not just faster analytics, they're a difference in kind from traditional static stats.
So what do these data points have in common? They're actually essentially about audience and shared experience. In the realtime web, we've focused a great deal on the latest noise. But as I said when I first wrote about the pushbutton web, what may matter most about realtime capaibilties is the user experience that's enabled. And the best use for realtime communications on the web is not to simply bring in the most recent information on a topic, but rather to make clear that others are experiencing or interacting with the same content at the same time.
There's Others Here With Us
Audiences matter. Being in an audience isn't simply about being at the same place at the same time. We act differently when we're in the presence of an audience. As audience members, we're more susceptible to being connected emotionally, expressing ourselves in uncharacteristically free ways, and forming lasting connections with the presenter, performer or content that we're experiencing.
Shy people start to sing along at concerts. Tea Party meetups start with group prayers that encourage participation from people who might otherwise be uncomfortable talking politics with strangers. Ostensibly unbiased journalists applaud at Apple keynote presentations. We are transformed when we're part of a shared experience.
Just as importantly, performers are elevated by the presence of the audience. I do a fair bit of public speaking, and I have obsessively watched a lot of the best performers of the pop culture world for my entire life. In studying their work, especially for artists who are significantly different between the studio work they do on a recording versus the live performances they do on stage, you can see a remarkable elevation of expressiveness and personality when they're facing an audience.
I've even seen it with bloggers and writers; Though blogging was often described (not inaccurately) as "theater for introverts" in its early days, a lot of bloggers and writers have matured into formidable public speakers as well. The first time I saw Malcolm Gladwell speak, almost seven years ago, he was an awkward and quiet presence, the very picture of an introverted writer. By just two years later, when he keynoted SXSW in support of the publication of Blink, he was effortlessly charming and spellbinding. Sure, he'd had a lot of practice. But it was clearly the interaction and attention of the audience that were drawing him out and raising his game.
Hello, Cleveland
When I create on the web today, I'm still completely isolated from the sense of having an audience. I have a couple of different (largely inaccurate or worthless) metrics about subscriber numbers, follower counts, or page views that I can look at to estimate the impact of something I've created. For a decade, though, I created posts on this blog with only a vague sense of people actually having a shared experience of reading these words. If I'm really lucky, a few friends might send me an instant message after publishing, and I'll know there was really someone on the other end of the line. Even long comment threads have the feel of the occasional straggler walking into a mostly-empty coffee shop for a few minutes: Cumulatively significant, but sparse and unpopulated at any particular moment.
That's a huge disconnect, and a huge opportunity. When I wrote my Facebook usernames post several months back, I had one of those rare moments where something I write resonates outside of the core tech community, and I could watch links to or mentions of the post roll in from Twitter and Facebook, in realtime. That sense that (what would eventually become) hundreds of people were all on my site at the same time was gratifying and rewarding in a way that felt, for the first time, just like the satisfaction I get when I know I've killed it onstage with a good presentation.
And we've misunderstood that motivation online for a long time. We deride searches for mentions of one's own work as "ego searches", implying there should be some sort of shame in looking for responses to our creativity. Services from YouTube to Twitter make it effortless to see what you've favorited from other people, but nearly impossible to measure or monitor who's marked your work as one of their favorites. Even if you can see that data, it's in an asynchronous, disconnected manner, instead of making clear which of those people were responding at the same time. Chartbeat mitigates this somewhat for me as a creator, but that doesn't help you as a reader. MyBlogLog, as ungainly and awkward as it's always been in its short life, would show some avatars for site visitors when they were on the same page. People embed live chat windows on their site so that visitors can talk to each other. But the essential experience of being in an audience isn't actually of audience members talking to one another. And while I've certainly been at movies where an excited and responsive audience improved the experience, I've absolutely never wondered if I could see a list of everyone in the audience with me, sorted by the order in which they found their seats.
Standing Room
Today's rough approximations of the right experience still fundamentally deny us the opportunity to be part of an audience together when we see something we love. Sure, we've all sent a YouTube link to a friend over instant messenger so that it could be enjoyed simultaneously, perhaps even to someone in the same room. But we're never allowed to just "look around" and see who else is there at the same time. It's part of the reason that very, very few web experiences can grab us and truly move us the way that media like movies and songs and television do.
There's a big opportunity here. I'm a better writer, blogger and thinker when I know there's an audience. (If I could see your eyes glazing over, maybe I would have edited this into a shorter post!) It could be transformative to our experience as creators if we could actually have the feeling of a real audience when we're sharing our thoughts to the world, instead of the arbitrary counts that the people selling advertising on the web have been referring to as an "audience" all of these years.
Most importantly, those of us who've had our lives transformed by the web, or who have had emotional and meaningful experiences of common connection through the Internet could have a way of sharing those experiences with a far broader audience that's familiar with the traditional behavior of audiences. I can't wait to see what becomes the equivalent of a standing ovation.
Thanks to Martin Fisch for the image.
2:44 PM
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- Earlier: Nobody's Read Everything
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Great (and lengthy) post!
Your comments on an audience changing the behavior of the observed are very timely. Not to get all Orwellian on you, but how do you think the public sphere will adapt and change in the near future due to this effect?
There are an incredible number of opportunities for our behavior to be recorded or observed now in daily life, particularly in cities. I'm just as concerned about being publicly recorded by a cell phone as I am worried about government/police observations of a public space.
I realize there is a difference between the presenter/audience relationship and the ordinary pedestrian's relationship with passive or incidental recording/observation. Where do think we�re going in terms of privacy/public behavior standards and technology?
*stands and claps*
Namaste Anil.
Excellent post;-) I too, do wonder who are my readers, especially during these days when visit numbers are growing.
I would love to get to know them and let them know each other, till I now I am able to "hook up" only with those who leave comments;-)
we shall see what tomorrow will bring
except crappy Valentine's madness;)
cheers from Slovakia
i.
Couple small things:
1. Great post, agree with most of what you are saying...I think one of the great deceptions of 'real time social' right now is how focused it has made people on time...when to me, it's really all about (or should be all about) people...audiences are swayed in-person because of the 'people' around them more so than the content...online, so far at least, the only thing we really have around us is the content (and that's much less moving than a fellow human)...
2. I think the closest thing to a standing ovation online right now is a link share/retweet/reblog...so powerful in fact that it's at the core of Google's original power...not saying it's the proper 'standing ovation', but I think it's the current online one...
3. In some ways, you could probably argue that Google Wave is an attempt at that real time interaction as content is being generated...perhaps it's just too far ahead of it's time for most of us? Before we can get into real time feedback to online content, we have to get better at feedback to content in general...I think comment systems like disqus are taking us in a good direction, but I think it's still just a baby step when compared to any form of real world feedback/interaction...
4. Nothing to do with anything in the post, but your 'login via facebook' bit for the comments bounces a user to an error (so I had to then manually go back to the post, attempt to log in a 2nd time, and the facebook cookie then figured it out and let me comment)...just a heads up.
Hi Anil,
Great post, as usual. But, I think one of the great things that the folks at TED have done is make the presentations freely available on the Internet. While, the exclusive nature of the conference itself is - like you mentioned - a reality distortion field - the presentations themselves are IMO mostly awesome !
I came upon TED only a few months back (when TED India happened) so I wrote this post for those who are curious about what it's all about...
Welcome back online! That month away from the Web and far abroad limbered up your neurons. Your observations upon your return are, as ever, lucid. I wonder, however, how close many online users are already to sharing experiences using current tools. How many of us watch livestreams from CNN.com or WhiteHouse.gov using Facebook as a social layer? Or how many tuned into the opening ceremonies at the Winter Olympics or the Superbowl and shared their thoughts, pictures or other feedback in real-time? If we create an online channel using an iPhone to Qik, train a video camera on an event and send it to ustream.com or turn on a webcam and fire up Livestream.com, we can instantly share our experience with the Web, observing the number of viewers that tune in and interact with them using social media layers.
All that being said, those tools are still maturing, especially with respect to a mainstream audience. Technology giants, like Google, may use YouTube to stream their announcement of Buzz. Most corporations, nonprofits or government agencies aren't quite read to "turn the Internet on." I suspect that will change as this young decade ages, perhaps with the influence of Expert Labs.
Many more of the latter entities are experimenting with Ideascale as a means to gather feedback on the ideas from citizens on improving policy or regulation. Officials are tuning in as well; as you noticed, Robert Gibbs joined Twitter as @PressSec today. I'm curious to see if he uses the platform to speak to the country, as opposed to the White House press corps. Given his interest in seeing how that corps reacted in real-time to his deputy, he may see just how far his audience may extend. That said, I don't expect him to be glancing down at a BlackBerry at the podium or a live tweetstream behind the nation's press secretary just yet.
To answer your question, however, I'd think the equivalent of a standing ovation is the reaction online to a post that's read by millions. Or perhaps a video that's watched by tens of millions, like Susan Boyle. Instead of clapping, you'll see tweeting, blogging and, most of all, linking, as @Kevin suggests. We'll want to record, save and, more of all, share the experience with other people in our social networks. The question then, is what the creators of the experience - the writers, directors, speakers or musicians - want to do with that audience. Commercial gain, civic improvement or increased awareness are all possible outcomes.
Circling back to the TED example, I wonder if Jamie Oliver's wish will be closer to reality because it was shared online through CNN.com. If he wants the world's help creating "a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity," engaging the widest online audience possible is, after all, a good way to go about it.
Good article. I thought about setting up some 'interactive hours' twice a week where people can go to my site Life Changing Thoughts and chat with me to promote the type of audience interaction I would like to see. I am very new to the web site arena so very much a work in progress. Thanks Anil for making me think!!
In writing about the future of the music business, I have been exploring some of these same issues. Musicians as a group are always searching for audiences. And the music industry continues to assume that there will be the creators of music and then there will be their fans to come listen to them and to buy their products.
However, technology is allowing more and more people to make music (just as it has allowed them to create blogs, upload videos, and share photos). I think there is the very real possibility that we'll have lots of musicians, each of whom will have just a small group of fans (mostly friends and family).
So, to your point, I don't think there is enough time for us all to be creators AND audiences.
Here's my latest blog on the subject.
Participatory Art Is Revolutionary
for me a standing ovation is 300+ comments and 10k+ visits in one day. at least that's how i measure it right now.
curious what you think of Chatroulette Anil.
we seem to have similar taste. you told me kickstarter and foursquare were the two most interesting startups of 2009 and we agreed.
I'm still processing Chatroulette. I think it's interesting, of course, not least because it shows how smart Russian kids are, when I think a lot of the U.S. startup community still thinks of Russia (and India, and eastern Europe) as a place to farm out coding to, not as a place where innovation is happening. Maybe at best they're looking at DST for money, instead of looking to those markets for ideas.
As to the application itself, I know we've had similar ones before, but adoption and network effects, especially outside of the tech bubble of try-anything adopters, seems very valuable. There's also a nice underlooked part of the "ZOMG iPad doesn't have Flash!" story here in that mainstream videoconferencing and webcam upload essentially all happens because Flash enables it, and platforms like iPhone and iPad are going to have to hope for early creation of native apps in order to become part of phenomena like Chatroulette, if they want to make use of all those iSights.
All that being said, the randomness may be more valuable than the video here. I can't help but think "TweetRoulette" would be damned interesting, and maybe the Suggested User List should have been replaced with "here's a random stranger who speaks the same language as you"!
Hi Anil,
Thanks for the great post. The question you raise is intriguing. Although I am new to this discussion and agree with most of the content, I think of the standing ovation differently.
Chasing a real time audience, holding them together and delivering content good enough to deserve a standing ovation is daunting. Adding a social-web dimension to it makes it quick and simultaneously risky.
I think tools that integrate all the relevant responses to content in a single dashboard and update it in real time, just like the $ counter on a slot machine, may come close to a standing ovation. But it may show cumulative results. Highest momentary count can be a measure. I wouldn't suggest plotting a normal distribution curve as I don't want to kill the excitement.
Real time response may be a skewed measure, I think cumulative response may be a better reflection of a standing ovation.
Just, my two cents!
Tanmay
"And while I've certainly been at movies where an excited and responsive audience improved the experience, I've absolutely never wondered if I could see a list of everyone in the audience with me, sorted by the order in which they found their seats." Several thoughts about this, one or two of which will appear here...
Is this a good or bad thing? Not quite clear what the tone of this remark is supposed to be.
And if you did this, you'd probably find that most people sit in what I call middle middle, and work their way from the center, to the outer fringes.
How big, is your big screen? :)