Who you are following, or how many you follow?

It’s not who you know anymore – it’s who knows you…

…I guess is stated by one of still quite few people who are desperately hunting followers on Twitter.

The psychology of Twitter is great:
1. I say something
2. I want response
3. I don’t get response
4. I need followers
5. I follow as many as possible to show my presence
5. I get some followers
6. I improve my tweets to get response from my followers
7. I don’t get enough response on my tweets
8. I want more followers
9. I am totally impressed by anyone having lots of followers as I want them badly for my own tweets.

If you’re trying to or are going to sell anything it’s great to have many followers to have a bunch of loyal listeners to fast spread your word, but otherwise I suggest it is ‘who you are following’ that should make you worth more. Also I would get skeptical to someone who is sending 40 tweets per day. When does s/he deliver?

I guess it is easy to feel that Twitter is the only thing that matters anymore when you’re there trying to hunt followers, but “there is a small contingent of users who are very active. Specifically, the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets. On a typical online social network, the top 10% of users account for 30% of all production.”

About 21% of 75 million registered Twitter accounts were active in 2010 - ca 16 millions, 34% have not tweeted since they created an account, 17% have no followers, 61% have less than five, 74% less than 10. 51% follow fewer than 5 and 60% less than 10.To me it sounds as at the most there are about 15 million people who use Twitter. Split those on 250 countries where countries as UK has about 712 000 active members, Norway 17 000 and France 6 700. 70% are 18-49 years old and half of the users have not been to college.



This image is by no means perfect or fully correct, but I’m thinking that Twitter is a powerful medium and will probably be far more powerful by soon time, but that there are still an awful lot of people who don’t use it, and that it takes a lot of time from actual deliverance from those who are not only using it for keeping updated, but for becoming acknowledged – only by them who spend time on Twitter.

Thank you Liisa for Paperdollheaven

I’ve been working lately on an attempt to conretisize differencies and similarities in girls’ and boy’s gaming preferences and behaviors. Doing so I’ve been scanning a few basic gaming design books, both to double check myself and to see if there were anything to find on girls’ games at all. I still have to check ‘Gender Inclusive Game Design’ by Sheri Graner Ray. It’s from 2003 and much has happened since then, but I hope to find some striking words in this bespoken book, because I don’t find anything interesting in the basic literature. ‘Game Design and Development’ by Ernest Adams and Andrew Rollings is a good check list of everything you need to start and set up a game, but when you come to the chapter ‘Creative and Expressive Play’ it’s a great disappointment. This kind of games is the absolutely most interesting from a general girl’s perspective and there is so much that it doesn’t describe. I’d like to erase it completely and restart it.
However I found a great quotation by game designer Brian Moriarity from 1997 that I will have to keep as a reminder of what creating a great game for boys, girls or any selected target group, really is about. I know it, and I don't want to forget it. This quotations also direct responds to what 58 year old ex nurse Liisa did when founding Paperdollheaven.

“Well, I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t come from design committees. It doesn’t come from focus groups or market surveys. It doesn’t come from cool technology or expensive marketing. And it never happens by accident or by luck. Games with harmony emerge from a fundamental note of clear intention. … A sense of inner unity that has nothing to do with what or how you did something, it has something to do with why. Myst and Gemstone both have harmony. They have it because their makers had a vision of the experience they were trying to achieve and the confidence to attain it. … They resisted the urge to overbuild. They didn’t pile on a lot of gratuitous features just so they could boast about them. And they resisted the temptation to employ inappropriate emotional effects.”



Great love to you Liisa, I’m so greatful for the chance I got to work with your dolls on Stardoll/malin

Changes are always bad but good

A community always belongs to the members, at least in their hearts. A community always consists of and exists thanks to the members, so partly they are right of course. But in the end there is always someone who wants there to be some big profit too, and those are seldom part of the community.

All this is important to remember when changing anything at all in a community. The members know this and so must the company. The members see every little change and put the puzzle together of what the company is up to, and the big buzz is always – ‘are they doing this change for us, or for their own economical profits?’. They know so well that the company must improve the condition for ad impressions, user sales, page views etc, and they accept that. But in return they own the product. They require to have a word in the changes, if the colors are right, the stylings, the copy, the details in the features. And if they don’t - the changes are no good. The savvy member would have done it differently.

At the same time all changes always push the already member activity to maximum for a couple of weeks. They try it, test it, discuss it, hate it and after a month they know it as their own and wait for the next change. Hopefully they will be asked for their opinion in advance the next time. In the end, it’s at least they who are going to use it, so it is not more than right.



How many revamp does stardoll have to do? It’s just getting tiring now . .

But I suppose Stardoll have to do anything to get more members with more advertisements and updates. It looks nice but what were they thinking dressing up those horrible dolls? There’s a punk/emo girl, which just looks wrong. A tart who should really be given a lesson in pairing accessories with clothes. A Robert Pattinson look -a-like, which will probably get a few Twilight fan-girls joining up. All of the dolls just look like they’ve stepped into a wardrobe half blind .They could have least put make-up on the dolls to give it an edge. I preferred the dolls on the old front page, they could have just used the same dolls with a different layout.

If you run a competition for paying members to enter dress up styles for the upcoming startpage you offer a payment trigger, an event and a more 'fair' selection of styles, a selection made by the members.


Also read more about changes in Christopher S. Penn's post here qoated 'The perceived pain of change, of doing something new, of trying something new, is usually much greater than the perceived pain of staying as is, of keeping the status quo.' The most impossible navigation ever is now the one you know and you don't know the next one. Again, let the member own the change to accept it.

Credit lists in the end

Nobody reads them, great to have for future references, but for all involved it pays off better by just telling each and everyone when doing a great job. Face to face.

Recycle art

or Paper Couture in a much more fancy way to put it. Linda Filley shows us how to reuse, reinvent and recycle in the most adorable manner. Don't throw paper in the bin, make beautyful or useful stuff out of it.

DIYana

På 80-talet var det Levis 501:or som gällde på högstadiets skolgård, helst med en reva på knät, det fick inte se för propert ut, man var ju ung och vårdslös – oförsiktig, rörlig, fri. Calvin Klein hade några år tidigare varit först med att sälja jeans för dyra pengar med hjälp av en skandalöst ung och avklädd Brooke Shields. Jeansen som plagg hade redan tagit sig in i ’de rikas’ garderob och Escada sålde vid det här laget vita med guldapplikationer. De var tydligt särskiljda från mina 501:or, hade aldrig kunnat blandas ihop.

Tidigt 90-tal hade trenden med revorna spritt sig, inte till överklassens medelålders kvinnor, men ända bort till ungdomarna på Östermalm. De gick också på nattklubbarna i stan, ville också se rätt ut för att få komma in på Alphabet Street. Vi på Kungsholmen skrattade åt denna trickle-down effekt. Vilka fånar att ha trasiga jeans när man har så mycket pengar. Vi tyckte inte om att de från bättre förhållanden gav sig ut för att veta något om hur det var att inte vara född med silversked i mun.

Trasiga jeans har vi ju sett på överklassens medelålders kvinnor sedan länge tillbaka nu. Vi kanske tänker en kortis att de försöker se lite yngre ut än vad de faktiskt är, men funderar inte så mycket över vilken samhällsklass som får eller inte får ha jeans.

Efter många års standardstatus blev jeans åter heta igen i och med sämre tider. Det är ett slitstarkt material som håller länge och som går att återanvända till nya modeller. Det kan därmed också låta som ett miljövänligt material som faller in under eco-trenden, men då måste de köpas begagnade. Bomullsproduktion, infärgning och tvättar gör jeans till ett av de mer miljökatastrofala plagg man kan bära. Men trendigare kan det inte bli – riv sönder i remsor, sy ihop igen, lappa, fransa, sy på, dra av.

Eller så kan man betala nedrans dyrt för samma look, och just det här förvånar faktiskt mig än idag – att man kan betala så dyra pengar till de största modehusen för att få en riktig trashy fashion look?? Det tar mig emot. Jag syr inte, lappar inte, drar inte av… men ändå kan jag inte slänga upp många tusenlappar för den här osannolikt snygga jeans stassen från Jean Paul Gaultier. Det känns som att jag borde göra den själv.

DIY på Stardoll istället?