How do we create better conversations?

My last post on local startups not leveraging on R&D generate zero comments on this blog. However, over at my facebook profile, lots of people commented on that post, or more specifically, the title of that post. That incident alone generated a few pondering thoughts that I wanted to share here.

The first thought I have was about the portability of conversations. Despite the fact that the comments on my Facebook might be relevant to this blog, there is no way (that I know of) to carry that conversation over here. This reminds me of the discussions on the portability of the social graph a few months back, which is resolved with Friends Connect. I think the same thing needs to happen but this time on our conversation graph.

























Secondly, I was using Twitter like tags to address my comments to different people. This again brings me back to the same point that we need such tags across all services that have a communication component. It will make targeted conversation more convenient and reduce attention costs for the rest of the people for which the comment is irrelevant. Such costs are not trivial. I am beginning to see some smart people talking about the conversation attention costs and what can be done to reduce it.

Finally, beyond sharing conversations, the more important point is how do I then turn the conversation to action? My post has brought me my readers' attention. How then do I turn attention to collective action? That step, to me is a big glaring gap. (VenTwits is a good start)

Conversations and the conversation graph is becomming more important. I think it is worth to spend more time thinking about where this is going.

Posted in: conversational graph,idea generation,microblogging