Blog Posts About: socialdesign

A while back I posted an entry called Your Community is a Party Waiting to Happen that outlined a number of common sense ways that hosting a party is like managing an online community. I really believe the metaphor is useful and I've developed a talk on the subject.

Here are the slides from the talk...

Over the past 3 weeks or so, I've fallen for Facebook. It has continually impressed me with it's innovation, social design and growing dominance of its space. Facebook does a lot of things well, but the one thing that impresses me most is how it exposes the actions of my friends on the site. I can see it when Kris Krug joins a group or Duncan Rawlinson updates Twitter . It brings the online and public world of my friends closer to me.


I can't help but think about the whole idea of stocks and flows, borrowed from the field of systems dynamics. I wrote a series a while back about it - but the basic idea that online communication has two states - active and static. For instance, when a blog post is posted, it's active - it flows through the blogosphere, through rss readers, etc. After a while, it becomes archived and static - stocked for future reference. Online content flows and then becomes stocked.


We're surrounded by flows in the online world all the time - headlines, stock prices, web stats, weather, email - these all flow by us over the course of the day. Watching these flows is addicting - every day there is something new. In a lot of ways, it's all just news.
Will Pate recently asked about what makes social network sites (like facebook, flickr, etc.) addictive and I think it's related to the same flows that keep us wrapped up in the news. Only, in social networking, the news isn't coming from the stock market or the associated press, it's coming from your sister, or co-worker, or hero.

What Facebook and other sites like Flickr do so well is to enable us to engage in a flow of personal news that is being created by our network of friends. We're drawn to it, and become addicted because we're wired for news - for looking for trends, for stories, for a bit if voyeurism. The new news comes from our friends.

For example, it's news to me when Will adds adds a friend in Facebook - it adds to what I know about Will. The thing is, and this is essential, these parts of my friend's world are now visible to me - and they weren't before. I can see that Will is friends with Lyal Avery. It's apparent to me what my friends are doing, saying or creating thanks to the flow coming from social networking sites and that, my friends, is the new and amazingly addictive news to me.

It wasn't too long ago that online communities had a killer app - it was the message board. It was the Honeymooners of early television. When choice was limited, popularity grew around the best options of the time. Indeed, the friendly message board has been a bedrock of online community interaction - one of the original articles. These days however, the message board has competition in the effort for your community's attention.

The central problem is the discussion format. Discussion is not a comfortable situation for a lot of people, online and off. No one wants to be the guy or gal who stepped up and fell on deaf ears. It's scary stuff and only a certain percentage of people are prepared for that sort of communication on a web site. Of course there some that like it way too much, but that's another post.

My point is that the participation options have grown. If you're thinking about an online community, consider all the ways that you can enable members to participate. What about...

Social networking - What's included on the member profile? Can the profile work more like a member home page ? Can people declare their connections to one another? Can new content be filtered through personal connections?

Groups - Can your members form new groups within the community? Can they invite one other to join a group focused on a specific subject matter? Many social networking sites like FaceBook use this feature.

Blogging - Is there a way for your members to communicate without the expectation of discussion - a soap box? Can a member start their own blog? What about the community manager - does he/she have a blog for relating news and community events? The March of Dimes Share Your Story Community is using blogs and message boards effectively.

Tags - Do you enable members to tag (describe with free form keywords) content within the community? Can members use the tags to group related pieces of content? Flickr photos is a great example of this feature for photos.

Personal Tags - Can members tag themselves with words that relate their interests? Can these tags be used to bring people together with common interests? Can personal tags be used to match people with content?

External Tags - Does your community have a tag they use to remember external web sites? An example is the "nptech" tag that Non-Profit technology people use to organize content from around the web.

Social Bookmarking - Are your members using a social bookmarking service like Del.icio.us? What if your site displayed an updated list of all the sites that your members bookmarked from across the web? Does your community manager use bookmarking tools? If so, the community would likely be interested. An example is our Zeitgeist page here.

Face-to-face - Do you help your members meet face-to-face? Meetup is a great example of "using the internet to get people off the internet"

Ratings - Do you enable your members to participate in the form of ratings? Stars? Thumbs up or down? Digg?

Favorites - Can your members mark specific community content as "favorites". Are the favorites displayed in public? Can the members share Favorites?

Surveys or Polls - Do your members have opportunities to participate in short polls that work to summarize the perceptions of the community around pertinent subjects?

Micro-updates - Can your members post little updates about what is on their mind or what they're doing? Maybe like Twitter?

Wiki - Are there any parts of your web site where members can edit the page? What about making a new page? Could content exist in static and editable form? Could your site work like Wikipedia?

Comments/annotations on static content - Do you enable members to provide feedback on a news article or other static content? Can members annotate a page?

Presence - When a member is logged in, is their presence made apparent to other members? Can they use presence to start a 1:1 conversation?

Chat - Do you enable members to chat in a group setting in real time? Maybe at the same time every week? Could IM be integrated?

Video - Can your members upload or embed videos? Can they have a video as a part of their member profile? Would screencasts help your community understand how to use the site?

Photos - Can your members upload photos to the community? Can they collect them on their member profile? What about a Flickr badge?

Cross Community Displays - Can members display widgets or badges from other sites where they participate? My Space pages are often full of these types of displays.

Customization - Can members change the way their profile appears on the site? Colors, fonts, layout.

Geo Mapping - Can members place themselves on a map? Can the community see itself in terms of location on a map? Can members form groups around locations? Google Maps makes this easy and provides for making "map mashups" and Plazes enables members to share locations.

Moderation - Can your members do basic content moderation? Can they report inappropriate content? 43 Things is empowering members to help them fight spam.

Contests/Games - Are there opportunities for members to compete with one another and create amazing content at the same time? JPG Magazine enables amateur photographers to compete to appear in the real world magazine.

Production - Have you asked your members about designing a new logo for the company? What about a t-shirt for an upcoming conference? Threadless is a great model for community production.

Special Guests - Do you know special guests that would agree to visit the community and have chats or discussions with members?

RSS - Can members share or suggest RSS feeds? Can they add headlines from RSS feeds to their member profiles?

RSS Aggregation - Does your site have a place for members to read constantly updated news that is pertinent to the community? This can be done with an on-site RSS reader. If so, can members add new RSS feeds?

Direct Email Contact - Is there an easy and secure way for members to email one-another using the web site? Danger: spam.

Refer-a-friend - Can members send an email to a friend to invite them to participate?

Email Participation - Can members email content directly to the site? Many wiki sites enable this.

Of course, the question remains which of these features will work best for a specific community. While I don't have an answer for that question, I do have the incorrect answer: it is "everything". No community can or should benefit from all the features listed above - attempting to do it all is a recipe for failure. The rule is to start small and focused and build to needs over time.

Again, there is an excellent probability that your community will benefit from a message board. My point is not to 'dis our long-time friend. My point is to illustrate that the participation landscape is changing. Look at your community and assume that the message board is not for everyone and I think you'll see that the possibilities to engage the other people are endless.

Sean reminded me about a local Seattle company called Visible Technologies that enables organizations to listen and respond to the commentary that is occurring across blogs, social networks and communities.

This is a fast growing niche and one that is fun to watch. Organizations of all types are growing more and more curious about what is being said about them online - and struggling to respond in the appropriate way. While I have confidence that Visible will do well as a company, I think they are playing with fire - the destructive nature of which I hope their clients fully understand.

Here's are some quotes from a recent article about them in the Seattle Times.

If a blogger badmouths the Hummer, for instance, the system could notify GM. Within the console, a PR person can draft a response, inserting key points, then get approval to post or e-mail the nettlesome blogger.

Clients pick an "author" or opt for anonymity. Visible also has a virtual army �?? thousands of personas registered with online forums.

What? "Thousands of personas in online forums" sounds like thousands of opportunities for organizations to do exactly the wrong thing. If a company really wants to listen and to respond responsibly, there are no shortcuts. Community members call smell bullshit from a mile away and Visible's system appears to make it easy for organizations to manufacture the stuff by the tractor load.

Graziano said the idea is to make it easier for companies to respond and participate, but it's up to clients to decide how the tools are used.

"This is a communication tool," he said. "It's not a pull-the-wool-over-anybody's-eyes tool."

Maybe I'm cynical, but I don't think a communication tool is what is needed. I'm all for listening - companies need better tools for understanding perceptions and I'm sure that Visible has a great tool for listening. However, when it comes to reacting, a better communication system (i.e. a way to drop a response into a forum) is not going to help and could likely backfire in a big, big way.

What is needed is a strategy for authentic and contextual conversation and an understanding of how to work with bloggers and communities, not an easier way to for a PR person to "insert key points". No blogger or community member wants to hear the key points from a PR person and if they see it, they'll blog about it with the headline "Another company that doesn't get it". No company wants that.

I liked the way Sean ended his post:

I guess in debating if this is good, bad or it depends, I almost see this like a weapons manufacturer. The weapons themselves are neither good nor bad - it depends on who ultimately is using them and for what purposes.

I just hope that Visible's clients understand the risks before jumping in too deep. Napalm is dangerous stuff.

There’s a lot going on out there and I wish I had more time to take it all in. I’m about to leave town tomorrow morning for a bachelor party so I’m posting the bare minimum here. A couple of things that caught my eye recently:

Amy Gahran has been posting a series called Handling Porcupines, Trolls, and Other Online Vermin that is about understanding and working with people who have poor online communication skills.

Someone who has a lot of experience in the area above is Tom Coates. Though his latest post is not related to vermin, but: On hybridised RSS feeds as evidence of a need for weblog refactoring... ...which turned into a history of weblogs and social tools.

Tom is asking if it’s time to step back from our blogs ask if it’s time to figure out what’s next. Don't be scared by the awful title- it is food for thought indeed.

Wish me luck for the coming days, Vegas in the crosshairs.

I got a couple of pointers recently to really cool diagrams showing how groups of technologies and services could be combined to create a socially based system for education, learning, etc.

Check out this diagram from Scott Wilson. He talks more about it here.

Then there is this diagram of a system from CogDogBlog called Ocotillo. More information here.

I'm starting to feel more and more confident that the most valuable systems in the future won't be using individual tools like blogs, wiki, message boards, etc. What may really work best is using a number of resources in the same environment with each one playing an individual role- the role that fits with the needs of the users.

As I've mentioned recently, I'm looking forward to learning more about Drupal, which is supposed to built for this type of convergence.

Thanks to Nancy for the pointers.