Today identica rolled out a new, well, a new bit of everything: new version, new interface, new functions and features, new optimism on the field.

It’s been sometime since I last checked so I am not 100% sure what was already there and what appeared today, but I am pretty sure that the ‘groups’ are brand new!
Yeah, you got it right: groups! Birds  of a feather etc. Anyone can open a new group and anyone can join.
When posting, by prefixing the group name with a “!”, one can send an update to all the members of the group, regardless if he is subscribed to them. Feels like a hybrid of friendfeed rooms and facebook groups and it can be extemely useful for noise reduction (or amplification), if left untouched by spanmers. Because it is the kind of functionality they would drool upon.

Other goodies?

• Autofollowing your subscribers (recommended for bots).
• SMS updates (lots of carriers supported).
• Twitter cross posting and autotracking and following your twitter friends in identica.
• PMs and Favs for those who can’t live without them .
• IM interface.
• A new pretty functional design.

And, finally, a few bugs.

I am sure I missed things as I was hastily checking between dining and packing.

The important thing is that identica is moving to the right direction.

No, it won’t replace twitter but might shake it out of its inertia.

Remembering that identica is based on laconica, which is open source and supports federation, what i expect it to become, is a community tool. The evolution of a forum.
And since microblogging is already making advances in the corporate environment, I expect it to be a viable alternative to the likes of yammer.
This is already a lot.

(apologies for the abse

nce of links, I am writing this on my iPod touch)

A few minutes ago I saw in a tweet of Steve Rubel that Charlene Li is going to deliver a webminar by the end of this month. Thinking of Charlene Li, my mind jumped to her book, Groundswell, and then to the Social Technographics methodology of classifying social media participants (for those not familiar with technographics, look at this short presentation).

Where do twitter users stand in this frame?

Are they Creators? Yes, if they post original thoughts or emotions or pieces of information that they eyewitness and are worth of sharing.

But then, if they reply to other users that do the above,  they are Critics also.

What about link sharing in twitter, or retweeting or favoring the tweets of others? Surely, these users could be classified as Collectors.

Let’s not forget that Twitter is a social network in itself. It is a social network in its purest, simplest and stripped down form. So ALL twitter users are somehow Joiners.

Now, recollect on  how  many tweets do you react upon and what percentage of the tweets of your social graph, belong to you. Most people’s contribution and participation can be considered insignificant when compared to their social graph’s aggregate activity. What are they then? Mostly Spectators.

Last:  I am sure you are familiar with those users that engage for a period of time and then disappear, sometimes even deleting their accounts, sometimes simply abstaining from twitter usage. Inactives!

I understand that a similar line of thought can be applied to most social media.  Yet, no other medium offers such a balanced distribution of roles. Not roles of different people, but roles of the same people in different moments.

Now, how would that fit in the technographics analysis? Beats me! You?

From the word tree of the inauguration speech. Pretty telling!

I

You

They

We

I am sure David Allen did not include it in his initial version of  “Get Things Done“  but, as far as I am concerned, it must be included from now on.
Ok, here is the new principle:

Abstain from Twitter or Friendfeed or Google Reader for so long as needed to see your TODO list drop down to one third.
If  ”one third’  is still above ‘ five items’,  abstain till it gets down to five.

Try it.

I am still trying it, by the way :)