Reading a blog entry is like reading a lecture, where the addition of twitter, friend feed, and social median adds another level to the whole process, it starts a conversation.

The conversation starter can be a blog entry, it can also be a comment, or a tweet or anything else we use to contact and reach out to other people. Right now, the value is in the conversation that is happening on these systems, and not necessarily in the original entry. While there might be controversy over a blog entry, or someone might do something that raises the ire of the community, the idea is that these conversations also add a promising dimension to what we are doing in social media.

The conversation is the important part, knowing that few will make a comment on a blog, the conversation that we have on other systems becomes the whole meaning of the dialog that we are having in the industry, or with each other. It is not the number of people you hang out with, it is the number of conversations you have over an issue or an idea.

Sometimes those conversations lead to blog entries because it is hard enough trying to say something important in a few lines, or a maximum number of characters. Together the blog and the conversation have synergies between the two of them that refine and define the idea, the comment, or the conversation starter. As a species, we love to communicate with each other, and the conversation is rewarding to us, it might also hurt our feelings, or we might misinterpret what is being said, but the conversation helps clarify and refine the idea. This way people walk away thinking or knowing that they have been heard, and if their idea has not been accepted, at least they had their say in the conversation.

The success of systems, twitter, and friend feed depend on the dynamic conversation, diverse people in many places having the conversation. While more asynchronous systems like Social Median, Digg, Mixx and others allow conversation but it is not required, rather we converse by voting or clipping the article that we are looking at. Either way we get to interact with the article, but it is the conversation that we have on Twitter and Friend Feed (and possibly the reason for their huge growth curves) is that the conversation can take place in real time, regardless of device, and regardless of time zone. All you have to do is be there to participate, just as you would do in a real face-to-face conversation.

There are many conversations that we can have, good, bad, ugly, repetitious, and injurious with each other. The people involved in the conversation can decide how it will go, much like in real life. That is why as a collecting system, friend feed shows that it has superiority over other systems that do not include the ability to have a conversation in real time. Twitter also allows the conversation, but it is hard to follow the threads, if twitter was to include a thread function so you could follow the thread, twitter would become a powerhouse system for conversations. Friend feed allows the conversation to be threaded, and that is key to good communications, to understand what you are saying, I have to know where we have been, what you are saying, what others are saying, and how those all relate to each other.

Realistically we are seeing the movement of the conversation from the blog and comments to the blog tied into friend feed or twitter that are enabling people to have conversations over ideas and thoughts. The blog entry is the root of the idea, but where the conversation goes after that is anyone’s best guess, and like many face-to-face conversations, you never know where they will go. That is the rewarding part and the reason to use these systems; it is the conversation that we are having that is important.

Tags: friend feed, social median,digg, mixx, twitter, conversation, time, blog