The Conversation Prism

October 21, 2010 7:59 AM

The Conversation Prism "gives you a whole view of the social media universe, categorized and also organized by how people use each network."

Wot no metafilter? Still, an interesting representation though, I was surprised by how many I'd never heard of.

if it IS there, don't tell me. I need new glasses at the moment, ok?

posted by greenish (26 comments total)

Nicheworking: a new word to hate!
posted by theodolite at 8:10 AM on October 21, 2010 [6 favorites]

Wow, I must be becoming dyslexic. First I read that word as "Conservatism," then as "Conservation." Took me three tries to see "Conversation." I swear I'm getting dumber the older I get.

Anyway, it's a cool concept. Here's a direct link to the prism image if you couldn't find it (it's the "download" button, which scared me off initially). Seems to be pretty comprehensive, though I noticed that Wordie is still on there, under Documents/Content. That site got swallowed up by Wordnik, more than a year ago. But I guess with this many sites included, it'd be near impossible to keep the list current. It's very pretty anyway!
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 8:28 AM on October 21, 2010

The Conversation Prism gives you an overdecorated list of website logos organized into broad categories of debatable accuracy, with a handful of random biz-nouns arranged in a circle in the center for some reason.

I'm particularly amused by the "download" and "embed" links for what turns out to be a plain old jpeg.
posted by ook at 8:55 AM on October 21, 2010 [12 favorites]

BRAND IS THE CENTER OF EVERYTHING!
posted by brundlefly at 9:14 AM on October 21, 2010 [4 favorites]

I didn't send in enough boxtops to get my Conversation Prism Decoder Ring yet.
posted by zephyr_words at 9:14 AM on October 21, 2010

Couldn't find Livejournal anywhere among those tiny logos -- is my sight hopelessly weak, or is my site hopelessly irrelevant?

Either way, I feel old.
posted by Narrative Priorities at 9:21 AM on October 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

I understand the outer, uh, petals with the logos (even if they're hard to read), but what the heck is going on in the center? Are the words supposed to be associated with the businesses they're adjacent to? What does "crisis" have to do with Second Life? What does "community" have to do Hulu? Are they just random words thrown in there?
posted by brundlefly at 9:22 AM on October 21, 2010

I don't understand what the colors represent and how each color is similar to its neighbor. I don't think Edward Tufte would be pleased...
posted by cman at 9:27 AM on October 21, 2010

Looks like MeFi would be somewhere in the blue range, so I trust the accruacy of the chromatic representation.
posted by not_on_display at 9:28 AM on October 21, 2010

I liked the bit where they put Digg in the "wisdom of the crowds" category.
posted by xbonesgt at 9:35 AM on October 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

I haven't heard of almost any of these sites, and they all seem to have stupid names. Grumble grumble.
posted by reductiondesign at 9:37 AM on October 21, 2010

I don't see 'hookups' anywhere.
posted by jonmc at 9:44 AM on October 21, 2010

This is what I would classify as a an example of a less than useful infographic.
posted by codacorolla at 10:08 AM on October 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

SOCIAL NETWORK HAS 4 CORNER DAY
IN SIMULTANEOUS 24 HOUR ROTATION
ARE YOU EDUCATED STUPID?
posted by DU at 10:20 AM on October 21, 2010 [7 favorites]

Grouply is there. The hate, I can still feel it.

There's NeoPets. Do people still play that?

Overall yeah, kinda lame. I easily get more information from one of xkcd's maps of the internet. But it doesn't look like Munroe uses Circos to make them, it's some other software that produces wavy lines and oddly non-regular fonts.
posted by JHarris at 10:28 AM on October 21, 2010

Thank you for this, it will be very useful in my career as a fake social media expert.
posted by Summer at 10:29 AM on October 21, 2010 [5 favorites]

There have been a million different variations on the "internet DNA" trope. Here's the short version:

You're spending too much time on the internet.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 10:35 AM on October 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

Who would have guessed that a social media/PR group would be so bad at web communication.
posted by Menomena at 10:38 AM on October 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

Glad I'm not the only one who thought "Download" was something more than a JPG link.. I thought it would be some kind of a cool app that would hook me up to a bunch of social media websites and do it in that cool colour prism layout. Consider me disappointed... Or colour me disappointed.
posted by Menomena at 10:41 AM on October 21, 2010

Thank you for this, it will be very useful in my career as a fake social media expert.

You'll be a thought leader in no time.
posted by brundlefly at 10:49 AM on October 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Who would have guessed that a social media/PR group would be so bad at web communication.

They really like arranging logos into arbitrary buzzword circles. They're big on rainbow-colored circles in general.

Not so much with the using those circles to communicate meaningful -- or in fact any -- information. Since it's a compass, which they're careful to point out is a "device for discovering orientation" and "indicator of direction", surely the placement of these buzzwords within the compass is significant. They intend to tell us for example that "reward" is the opposite of "recognition", since they're on opposite poles. And that "Syndication", "Humanization", and "Champions", on the same pole, are related. Somehow. Must be. Because using a compass as your visual metaphor and then randomly positioning your data on it in concentric fucking circles, well that would just be moronic. Especially when those concentric categories are meaningless too. ("Portability" is a "channel"? "Content creation" is a "platform"?)

I can't decide whether to be thoroughly pissed off that I have to live on the same planet where these guys are for some reason allowed to continue to breathe oxygen, or thoroughly impressed by how pitch perfectly they've parodied the vapid content-free buzzword-soup marketing dickheads who gives the whole industry a bad name.

Assuming they're real they'd probably peg me as a just another complainer. BUT DUDE THAT MEANS I'M JUST ONE STEP FROM A PRODUCER AMIRITE? Which is well on the way to benevolence, which is after all the "me" in social media.
posted by ook at 12:53 PM on October 21, 2010 [3 favorites]

According the the About page, one of the guys who made this "coined the phrase 'PR 2.0.'"

So there's that.
posted by brundlefly at 1:13 PM on October 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Gah. I've been making a real effort to not post comments here unless I'd be willing to make the same comment face-to-face. I don't want to be the Anonymous Internet Jerkwad, etc. So I regret the overheated "allowed to continue to breathe oxygen" rhetoric; that went too far.

But not the "vapid content-free buzzword-soup marketing dickheads who give the whole industry a bad name". That part I'll stand behind. I get that it's a viable business strategy -- there are plenty of design clients out there who are impressed enough by this nonsense to break out their checkbooks -- but that doesn't mean I have to respect the people who choose to engage in it.
posted by ook at 1:26 PM on October 21, 2010

Coincidentally, the title of Thomas Friedman's next book is "The Conversation Prism."
posted by jefbla at 2:39 PM on October 21, 2010

These things never have Livejournal. Does that mean LJ is doing something very wrong, or very right?
posted by egypturnash at 5:25 PM on October 21, 2010

Sorry, I couldn't hear anything you said -- I was inside the Conversation Prism.
posted by dhartung at 9:34 PM on October 21, 2010