How has the social media revolution changed your life? Share your story with us.

According to Jeff Pulver, who is known for his work with VoIP and as the co-founder of Vonage, everything he ever needed to know about social media, he discovered at age 15. At that point, he understood that social media was all about listening, connecting, sharing, and engaging.

Pulver told us that all his work with VoIP was motivated by his goal of connecting people both on the telephone and on the computer. He believes that social media is not about single platform. Instead, he believes it creates more places to have conversations.

Three of his favorite words are “fear, greed, and disruption.” He said these words have “affected the way we all communicate in business.” While these words appear to be negative, Pulver pointed out that there such a thing as “positive disruption,” which triggers change. Social media is one example of this “positive disruption” and the changes it has brought about are extensive.

He associates social sites such as Facebook and Twitter with the “Purple Minutes” classification that he popularized back in the early 2000′s. The term was used to describe the value-added IP traffic to separate it from the black and white phone minutes.

“It’s all these years later we’re starting to start to see how people are using IP-based networks to do things they never could do before,” he said.

It is for these reasons that Pulver believes we are experiencing a social media revolution in which everyone has access to information.

“It’s not a revolution about ‘we the people,’ but about ‘me the people.’ It’s these individual ‘me’s’ that are able to leverage these technologies directly and indirectly to effect positive and forceful change in the world,” he said.

Recent events such as the chaos in the Middle East and the band of natural disasters show how social media is sparking a revolution that is bringing people together throughout the world. As the revolution continues to evolve, those that do not jump on board with it are likely to face challenges.

“The companies that don’t get it may be disrupted out of business… those companies that understand this can actually change the way they do their business,” said Pulver.

A quick, church-sermon-esque Twitter search on "lost followers" reveals hundreds of tweets about them. Some have lost in the tens, others in the hundreds, and others report losing half to 75% of their follower lists.

Twenty or so disappeared from my own account. Jeff Pulver, who is also a Twitter investor, reports the loss of 400 followees and 700 followers overnight. The subsequent resounding question throughout the abbreviated Twittersphere: WTF?

According to that post:

"To combat aggressive following directly we have recently imposed new limits on following—spammy accounts following too many users have been drastically curbed. Those that existed prior to this new limit await review."

While the spam initiative has some interesting timing in relation to this morning’s phenomenon, it was clear early that not only spammy followers were lost, but also friends. Anna, who goes by ShoeSmitten on Twitter, says she lost 120 friends, accounting for half of her list. She told WebProNews many of them were "dear" friends and "far from spammers."

Pulver, too, indicated some larger problem. "I seemed to have lost 400 people who followed and 700 people who followed me," he said via email. "I’m still at 5,000+ ‘real people’ so maybe that is ok. I don’t know yet who got removed by accident and how many of these people where designated as spam.

"This issue is a sign of a bigger problem/challenge/learning that is ongoing."

Pulver also said that when Twitter launched in 2006, the founders "could not have appreciated the space they would be filling in the life of others and the unintended consequences that would prevail." He said this was part of the challenge of maintaining a "real enough time (RET) communication network."

Stone responded to request for comment saying the data loss was not because of recent spam efforts, but instead is a bug. "The followers/followees bug is unrelated to our spam initiatives," he said. "We worked on it last night but we’ll be looking more into the follower bug today."

There is a broader question here that may be very difficult to define. In April of this year, Rocketboom founder Andrew Baron briefly put his Twitter account up for auction on eBay, which brought into question whether one’s list of followers/followees has real monetary value. Baron pulled his auction, so we may not know, but bids reached about a dollar per follower. Could Twitter be liable for lost data then?

Pulver declined to put any specifics on the value of a Twitter account, but agreed there was value, however you define it, in them. "I believe that our social graphs have value. Understanding and levering your social graph is the subject for a fun conversation. But with 5,000 friends on Facebook and 5,000 followers (post twitter spamm issue) I believe there is ‘value’ there.

Posed the same question, Stone had not yet responded by press time.
 

UPDATE: There was a notice on the Twitter corporate blog early this morning warning of a loss of follower counts: 

"We’re still in the process of recovering from the missing follower/following problem that occurred earlier today. Over the next several hours, you may see inaccurate counts or timeline inconsistencies as the correct data is propagated to all parts of the system."

Delivering Web Video The Rocketboom Way

Our men on the scene, Rich Ord and Mike McDonald, continue to feed us reports from the conference. These notes come from Baron’s industry perspective chat on The Implications for Media in a Global Internet Culture to attendees, which we’ve excerpted for presentation here.

VON organizer Jeff Pulver welcomed Baron to the conference, and effused on how much he enjoyed being around “a bunch of people who really get it. I want to thank all of you for making this really cool.”

Baron thanked Pulver for his welcome and opened his talk. (Readers: please note this is a raw cross-section of Baron’s talk; we’re giving it to you this way to give you a feel for the impression he makes. Any perceived deficiencies in the flow or content are the fault of your humble scribes, not Andrew. – David)

Quickly, Rocketboom is a 3 minute blog style program where Joanne … our host … does quirky stories. One of the things that made Rocketboom so popular (about 350000 views a day)… is because we were one of the first adopters. I took an approach that I didn’t have fear of people grabbing RocketBoom and redistributing it.

By letting this go these people are becoming aware of Rocketboom as a brand. I feel that people online are inclined to come to us at the home page if they liked the content. We don’t allow commercial use without something worked out, but for any other reason I have no problem with that. Essentially, Rocketboom is like a big catcher’s mitt. We don’t do press releases or PR.

I found that if people want it over here I think we should make Rocketboom available …. So, we have an obnoxious number of file types.

Another thing I noticed is that the mainstream media does a good job with mainstream entertainment. Then there is the other side, and that is more about information. The qualify of production and effort for those kinds of programs is somewhat incidental.

So I thought ‘why not put entertainment and information together?’

Another element of a successful web video site is the sense of belonging. At least 25 percent of the content comes from viewers. We also have barely filtered comments off of every video cast. If you are watching a video on your iPod or on TV you can’t comment.

If you noticed we kind of have a Google aesthetic to the site…. websites are like your house or office…. it is a space where you want people to feel comfortable to watch your content.

Over the next year I will probably become a real proponent for wikis. This allows my audience to come in and really belong, really take ownership of the site. So far we only have 24 articles in the wiki I just set up. I showed which camera I used, and what happened is that the audience came into my wiki and corrected spelling and formatting and sort of cleaned it up.

We recently posting a question in the wiki; one was ‘where were you on September 11, 2001?’ It was fascinating to watch and see how people are reacting to it.

Imagine you come onto someone’s website, suppose you are a fan of the show… oh here’s Steve Garfield in my wiki…. it is interesting that the audience can come in and mess with this …. the audience feels like it belongs. That’s really powerful and important.

Now lets jump into monetizing web video. I have a sense that monetization is what people are interested in …

So far over the last 2 years because we all know that the level of entry is so low, you don’t need to raise money or even have money, but what you need is time. So then, where am I going to make my money?

I say set that aside and focus on building your audience. If I have 200,000 people or 400,000 people viewing, anyone on Wall Street will say that there is value there.

We charge $60,000 for a weeks worth of ads. We aren’t yet selling many ads because I am selling them myself at this point. I’m good at making the sale but I don’t have any feeling for it. I’m sorry but that’s me.

We like to create ads for our advertisers because I feel I know our audience best, and I know what works and what doesn’t work.

Our advertisements increase in value over time. As an example we used a Guinness commercial at the end of a segment on a brewery called Brooklyn Beer. Now here it is a year later, and because Rocketboom has a good link value on Google, there are over 6 million links in. It is more likely if someone is searching for a brewery in this area Rocketboom will come up. I see this as value for the advertiser.

We have a larger audience than many TV shows.

Another way to monetize your content is a premium subscription. For the hardcore fans, we will give you extra content and our newsletter, and ask them to pay $3.50 a month. For 10,000 people that is $35,000 per month.

Another method of monetizing is merchandising. At CollegeHumor.com these guy were making $400,000 per month. It’s crazy. At Rocketboom we are lousy at this, but still make $3,000-$4,000 per month from our one T-shirt.

Later I may plug in other shows to my huge catcher’s mitt of Rocketboom.

Blogging is so important to Rocketboom. How does blogging translate to video blogging? The answer is making the videos compelling and interesting. If you can find bloggers with a lot of authority to talk about you, that prompts the thousands of other bloggers to comment and take action.

Then journalists who feel threatened by bloggers notice what bloggers are saying; their big megaphone talks about you.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Jeff Pulver has been respected for years for his efforts at unwiring the telephone from the physical phone line. His contemporaries will offer their tribute by marking his birthday on Tuesday, as Om Malik reported on his blog:

Malik’s thoughts on telephony gather a significant measure of respect throughout the industry too. He attached a lot of importance to VoIP’s continued development:

It’s even given rise to a new buzzword – Voice 2.0, which Malik attributed to fellow VoIP blogger Alec Saunders.

Pulver waxed effusively about the opening of the conference and a new addition to the proceedings, as noted on his blog:

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.