Great debate. The constant struggle for control is very recognizable. I don’t know about you, but to me it comes in waves. At times I get frustrated and start to weed out my sources of information. But on other occasions, I kind of get into a mindful mood where I trust my skills as a surfer to stay on top of the waves and allow them to take me to where they are taking me while I’m enjoying the ride.

I’d like to know your stand on this.

There’s another thought I had while reading Chris Brogan’s post you referred to which may add another perspective to the discussion. Brogan talks about how he will go down trying to maintain a one-to-one conversation ratio while becoming overwhelmed by followers.

But what does he mean by that? Does he mean that within one of his many networks, he will fail to substantially engage in enough conversations to actually contribute something to a) the people he talks to and b) the people who listen in, all in favor of the quality of one-to-one conversations in another one of his networks (say, his family)?

Or does it mean that there is some kind of magical number of meaningful conversations a person can have per day/week/month which gets so dispersed over several connections that Brogan gets disconnected from the nature of those core-types of conversations and becomes someone who utters discrete words which only make sense if you are able to combine all interactions and conversations (which by then are so numerous it is impossible to grasp them)?

Another thing I’m wondering about when reading the post and the comments is this: how come our body can make sense out of so many stimuli which are processed seemingly simultaneously? And why wouldn’t that be the clue to deal with the many-to-many-nature of the social media environment? Because information in the form of written language has to be processed consciously? What if that isn’t true? What if the interactions do speak much louder than words? What if our minds and our desire for control get in the way of reading what’s actually being communicated within social media networks? What if we’re like surfers thinking they have to figure out every atom of the sea, the sky and the earth first in order to be able to read the waves and enjoy a great ride?

So it becomes somewhat like watching the Matrix fly by. I am likely to raise a question already asked and answered by the sheer volume. So when I have engaged in large chats, they tend to devolve into several smaller sub-chats more in keeping with the idea of Dunbar’s number.

However, you have inspired me to think more about this, as I have not really followed up on this topic.

Thanks for stopping by!

Sorry for being 10 months late to this post – I just discovered your blog today! Interesting post and comments. I want to push back a little on your premise that many-to-many communication is not feasible or scalable.

I think it feasible and scalable – but I think that we need to think about the communication process in a different way. You don’t communicate and interact in 1:1 conversations in the same way that you interact in small groups. To me, M:M is a scaled small group conversation.

For example, when I participate in a Twitter chat – I am having a many-to-many conversation with several other chatters. There is usually a topic and a moderator. The moderator’s role is to kick off the conversation and keep the conversation going (like a guide). The participants direct the conversation in the direction that they want. Participants can then communicate in the following ways:
> Respond or pose questions to moderator
> Pose Questions or Make Statements to the Entire Group.
> Respond or Ask Questions to individuals

What happens is that you end up with a very fast moving group dialogue where people are responding to each other, the group and the moderator. Since, there are 500 people talking at once about the same topic, you cannot listen to every comment with equal interest. So, you tend to concentrate on and discuss the elements that are most interesting(important) to you. Other participants will retweet the comments that are most useful to the entire group.

My favorite part of these M:M digital conversations is the ability to archive them AND Go Back and Replay the dialogue. This helps me see what I missed, capture new ideas, new insights and reinforce learning.

So, those are my two cents. Thanks for starting the conversation.

- Sam

(Note: I didn’t look at all of your posts – so if you blogged about some of these points later – I apologize)
Sam Smith´s last blog ..What if You Could Google the Minds of Your Attendees

Things like twitter are in the connection business so there is no effort to provide exclusivity or an audience. It is likely that the lack of emphasis will limit scalability. The result is a noisy Some-to-Some model.

Anthony Power’s last blog post..Twitter as A Broadcast Platform

Susan/Together We Flourish’s last blog post..D.O.V.E., Program for Young Women and Teens R.O.O.T.S.