Thursday, June 26, 2008

My First Twebinar

My First Twebinar


Today I attended my first Twebinar and I’d like to share my thoughts with you. As its name says, it is a combination of Webinar and Twitter. What is it exactly? It is a simultaneous webcast of video conversations with some of the big names in the social media sphere and a Twitter community livestream commentary of the conversations.


It was organized by Radian 6 (and supported by the Society for New Communications Research and the New Communications Forum) and announced as a modern communication mash up. It was both funny and useful to connect with social media folks, as it is a great initiative in itself but I have some suggestions for the future Twebinars.


First, this online social media meeting was not a real mash up. In order to be a mash up, as it is explained here, a form or creation has to be a new independent application developed by combining two or more Web sites. These mashed Web sites cease to exist separately from the moment of their unification and they are becoming an integral whole. Therefore, today’s Twebinar was not a real mash up. It was just a combination (a good one though) of the two social media tools/applications.


Today’s Twebinar was not enough alive. The microblogging livestream activity was very much alive (as it always is) but I was expected to attend a live casting of a chain of Web-based conversations. Chris’ conversations with the social media strategists were shoot earlier and that was a bit disappointing. It would have been much better if Chris had in his live studio some “real”guests and an ongoing animated conversations.


The interviews somehow lacked focus. The only overarching theme was the social media, but that was too general and for us already knowledgeable with the topic, it was not too informative. I cannot say that I learned anything new today. Therefore, for the future Twebinars, it would be better to focus on one particular hot social media topic and explore it in greater depth.


The Twitter chats were inspiring as always, but I had difficulty following all three (or two?) streams at once. Why not creating one centralized livestream? And why not preparing clearer instructions for the Twitter community beforehand?


Anyway, it was a great experience, a creative initiative from the Radian 6 team, and even better in terms of connecting with the new media community. And, I got a number of new followers….

And finally, I’d like to ask all of you who attended the first Twebinar: What do you think of it?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a great moment of reading blogs.

Anonymous said...

Probably I can say with this blog make, more some interesting topics.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for attending yesterday and for your feedback. Definitely some great ideas for us to consider with the next series. Some ideas may be able to be incorporated into the next two though the live vs. pre-recorded video part will have to wait until future series I'm afraid. Glad you enjoyed it though and got some value from it. Good point on the mashup definition - I liked the word vs. combo because at least it painted a better picture for the attempt to use both simultaneously. Thanks again.

PRometeus said...

Thanks David,

I'm hardly waiting for the next Twebinar.