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Guest Star: Twitter Product Manager Josh Elman
This post is part of a new "Guest Stars" series here on the Growing Demand blog. For our first installment we sat down with Josh Elman, product manager at Twitter. Before Josh joined the Twitter team, I had the pleasure of collaborating with him in his platform program role with Facebook, as our two companies
 worked together to enrich social experiences on Demand Media customer sites. Having worked in key product positions in all three of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, Josh knows a thing or two about social media's past, present and future. Here, he shares with us his unique perspectives on content discovery, mobile innovation and the world's greatest Twitter account. You can follow Josh on Twitter at @joshelman. AW: Where search has long been a common starting point for content discovery, we’re now seeing that social media and other newer technologies show quite some promise in helping users find what they want. How do you see social media’s role in content discovery evolving and unfolding? JE: With search, people already know something fairly specific they are looking for. Such as "how do I clean up this stain" or "what is the best price for me to purchase this camera". In these cases, search engines do a very good job of helping people find content that answers those questions. Part of the reason this works is that users trust that the search engine has looked at all the potential answers and is surfacing the very best ones. This earned trust is really important, and each search engine (whether Google, Bing, or vertical engines like Yelp for local business) have to build that up with you. The other reason this works is that people already know what they are looking for. But this is part of the challenge. You *have* to know what you are looking for. Really generic questions like "what's going on this weekend" or "what movie should I go see" really don't work in search engines. You rarely can uncover new content or new topics that you weren't generally looking for when you are just searching (though depending on where you land, you may be able to continue exploring). With social media, I see two big concepts converging that create a new path for content discovery. First is that users choose the sources of content they want to hear from (friends, media, celebrities, businesses that you follow) - meaning that they have a reason to trust the information they are explicitly expecting to receive beyond just faith in an algorithm. Second is that users get a constant stream ("real-time") of new content from these sources - things they weren't already looking for, but instead can discover based on what their friends and other sources are saying. If you think about it, it's not that new. People have always learned a lot of their information from other people. In just the past 10-15 years, we've exponentially sped up the way that we get updates from friends, get updated alerts, hear from our favorite businesses via newsletters, etc. Remember 10 years ago when many of your friends or family only checked email at work or responded a few days later? Social media tools are enabling a form of broadcasting and consumption that isn't tied to directed messages like email. With this new flow (on Facebook, Twitter, or other social tools), people are able to dip in and discover more new information, faster than before, and most importantly more personalized to the things you are most interested in. AW: There’s been a lot of talk about real-time search over the past year, but it seems like most of the tools and partnerships in this area have left most folks somewhat unsatisfied. What do you think is most lacking in real-time search right now, and how (other than Twitter search) do you see this need being resolved? JE: I've always felt that "real-time search" is an interesting term because I think that this is less about "search" and more about "discovery" - finding new topics or trends, or the active conversations from the real-time stream. What most intrigues me about real-time discovery is finding out what people are talking about right now and getting a sense of the overall sentiment. People are using these social tools (Facebook, Twitter, etc) to express themselves and what they find interesting at that moment. Sometimes this is news articles or stories being passed around, sometimes a great or a terrible experience with a brand or business. I think the big new directions here will come around being able to aggregate major topics across any dimension (i.e. what's being talked about in San Francisco vs. Los Angeles, in one industry or age group vs. another) and in reputation - being able to figure out which of the information is most accurate and verifiable vs. rumor or even misinformation. AW: One thing we’ve focused on quite a bit here at Demand Media is a concept we call “social bridging”. Essentially this is enabling social interactions that take place on destination sites with the ability to be automatically shared with friends, followers and other connections on major social networks (like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn). How do you see the relationships between destination sites and big social networks evolving in the long-term? JE: This has been one of the most exciting changes in the consumer internet over the past few years. When we were first launching Facebook Connect, we realized that many content companies viewed social networking sites as "destination sites" or "walled gardens" and were afraid to have their content go in there for fear the content and the users and page views would never come back out. What has been happening instead is that users are viewing the social sites/streams as starting points where they go to see what their friends are talking about and sharing, and then launching back off to all the destination sites which created the content to explore more deeply. We see this driving more and more traffic than ever before back to those destination sites. Tools like Twitter's API, Facebook Connect, and ShareThis or AddThis can make this easier and easier for any content site to take advantage. One way to think about this for a destination site is that you still need to build and attract an audience or core customer base that come loyally to your site, not just when discovered via search or a friend. You should view social media as a great new user acquisition channels and sites that you can leverage to help create your core audience who keep coming back to your site. Then for each time you get someone back to your site, you can encourage them to share the information, their comment, etc., with their friends via social media and then help convert their friends to become part of your core audience. AW: Clearly the advancement of mobile platforms – the iPhone and Android in particular – is opening up some incredible opportunities for how social media works when we’re out in the real world. We have dozens of apps for pretty much every social network that’s out there and a few new, natively mobile ones. From your perspective what has the potential to be the next big area of innovation in social on-the-go? JE: I think the most interesting area of innovation right now has been in new location based services. Both Foursquare and Gowalla are doing some really interesting things with social media, combining several game mechanics to encourage people to "check-in" at various locations. I see Yelp has just launched something similar in their iPhone app to encourage this as well. What's really innovative here is that once you know where someone is you have an incredible ability to give them information, discounts, and new ideas for what to do next, creating the kind of targeting we've all dreamed of (and sometimes feared :) ) What interests me most about these services are the kinds of communities that can develop at places - when you see who checks in regularly, who are the loyal customers, etc., the businesses can interact with their customers in some really powerful new ways. AW: As you know, we help many leading brands and publishers determine, implement and optimize their social media programs. What do you think is the next big opportunity for this part of the web (publishers, marketers, retailers) to leverage social media and connect with the world? JE: A big opportunity for this part of the web is to deeply embrace tools like Twitter and Facebook Connect and take full advantage of bringing those social experiences into their sites. When a user shares a link from your site to Twitter or Facebook, that's a strong endorsement with a lot of context. When a user who is their friend or follower clicks on that link, they arrive at your site and lose all of that rich context and endorsement. I think one of the next big opportunities is to bring that context onto their sites. You can think of this initially as a "social landing page" where the link that was shared onto Facebook or Twitter comes along with the person who shared it and their comment. And then using the Facebook or Twitter APIs, you can continue the social engagement right there on the site - encouraging people to compare with their friends and share content back directly with their friends. I think 2010 is the year we'll start to see the real evidence of the shift from social experiences happening on the social networks to social experiences happening everywhere across the web. AW: Let’s fast forward to 2015. What are some ways you think we’ll be using social media, that aren’t common or even possible today? JE: It's amazing to reflect on how fast things are changing - five years ago Facebook was in use at Harvard and a few other colleges, and Twitter didn't even exist. So it's hard to imagine where we'll be 5 years from now. But here are a few ideas I think will start to come to fruition: a) when you are in a public place, you'll feel comfortable letting your friends know, finding out who is around, and be able to get tips on what you should do there - and getting ideas on where to go next. b) there will be a lot more sharing and conversation in private spaces with just a few targeted folks than in the public or even semi-public places we have today. c) the more often you or your friends shop somewhere, the better service and discounts you'll get. AW: You have to humor me on this one. What, in your opinion, is the best tweet in the entire world? JE: So, it's really hard to pick just one tweet, but I will say that over the Christmas holiday, I had the best laughs over following @loadedsanta and his journey around the world. It's highly inappropriate and somewhat offensive, but well, I laughed. AW: I’m not going to tell you who the next Q&A guest will be. However, I can tell you that he/she is, like you, a respected authority on the Internet and the online media business. What question should I ask this person? JE: If we had to start the Internet over and could only save 3 websites, what would you keep? Adam Weinroth is VP of Strategic Marketing for Demand Media. Follow Adam at @aweinroth.
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