Contextual note: Pathos, Ethos, Logos, the trinity of types of suasion.
And for today, Pathos. The appeal to the emotions.
Once upon a time, when I was consulting in communications strategies, I had a client, a very nice organization, a non-profit who hired my company to provide advice and training for their directors in their pursuit of money, the annual capital campaign. They already had enough money to pay us, happily. They knew they could do better in these annual campaigns, so they were looking to tap into our expertise.
So the first thing we did was arrange to tour around their many sites in the greater San Francisco area, to get an idea of what they were asking for money to actually support. They were wonderful about the tour, very friendly, knowledgable, clearly passionate about their work -- and here's a surprise -- they were all friendly knowledgable and passionate. I began to wonder about their fabulous recruiting process -- usually there are a few clinkers. So we met tens and twenties of friendly, knowledgable and passionate staff members, and toured tens and twenties of sites, centers, and programs.
And what they did there, what they did for each community they became part of -- well, it was what was needed, whatever was needed. Childcare, preschool, after school teen basketball leagues, esl classes, temporary housing, a subsidized lunch, a safe place to meet up with your kids, parenting classes, swimming classes, summer school, elder outreach, social dancing, bridge tournaments, whatever.
Okay, so I'm ready to write a check at this point.
We go talk to the program directors -- the people who needed training in how best to ask for money in this capital campaign. We asked, "Who are you asking?" and it turned out to be foundations, big local companies, civic organizations, whatever, whereever. They had all the speaking dates and appointments, they just weren't sure what to say.
So, a little non-plussed (seemed obvious to us, but then, we're the experts...), we arranged for a three day training session and wrote the curriculum. And the day dawned, we all showed up and got to work on helping these kind people learn to ask for money by tugging on heart strings.
And it was really hard. They really didn't want to. They were hoping we'd give them charts, a cost benefit analysis, a way to reach the cynical and hard-bitten on their own terms. So, we also did that, but never swerved from our recommendation -- use pathos, not logos. Or if you just can't bring yourself to use emotion, then at least use ethos -- speak from your own authority as a person.
There wasn't any solid logic available to them, but they had a powerfully compelling case. They were just uncomfortable about presenting it that way.
We had twelve people to train, and they all felt this way -- it just didn't seem fair. It felt manipulative, it felt undignified. We showed them the video tapes of their arguments based on emotion -- they were good -- they'd work! And yes, they agreed that this was so...but still. And that was the end of the first day.
We went back to the office, puzzling over how to rehabilitate the argument to the emotions, how to make it professionally respectable.
The next day, we showed up with a newly edited tape for the group and we started off with a quiz: "We're going to show you an argument and you're going to tell us if it's to the emotions, to logic or based on a person's authority." Okay, they all agreed, as nice as ever. And we rolled the tape.
A minute later we stopped the tape and said, "Well?" The hands shot up, and we had an excited discussion. We rolled the tape again, stopping it after thirty seconds: another lively discussion. A minute, 30 seconds, a minute, a minute, 15 seconds. More discussion, more excitement.
By the first break, the group had figured it all out. After the break, we had them do their presentations again, leaning on the emotional appeal, as we'd taught the day before -- and they were GREAT! Dignified, professional, and very heart-rending. They told tales about specific children and how their organization's services had made a difference in their lives, specific seniors, people ill unto death, new immigrants, a whole collection of specific faces came out in their presentations, and it was great. They added on -- going to places we couldn't lead them (after all, we're not altruists, and can only think along those lines so far...). They talked about how grateful they were personally to be able to put their life's work into these types of meaningful programs -- they turned the corner on the pathos and brought it back to ethos. Very elegant.
And what unlocked them? We showed them commercials. Commercial after commercial and asked them to apply the concepts of persuasion that we'd taught them the day before -- how is this company trying to persuade you? What type of appeal? Did it work? Why did it work? How could they have made it work?
All the participants jumped in to this fascinating parlor game -- not just watching commercials, but evaluating them. And they saw that the argument to emotions is very powerful, very commercial, and it can be very dignified.
Somehow, the commercials gave their own campaign for donations a sort of commercial validity, and they saw that to fail to use all the tools that capitalism uses to sell a sponge would be no service to their noble organization.
They had a very successful annual campaign that year, and for years after.
8.20.2007
Rhetoric and IA: I see no differences
Okay -- that's why I called it Rhetoric - IA. I actually have a university degree in Rhetoric -- it's right there on the diploma -- from Berkeley, no less. I really like the idea of becoming expert in rhetoric in the city that deplores its use. But it's okay, I'm a Berkeley native, so I guess whatever I do anywhere is a reflection on my home town.
I had a point to make, however -- I wanted to illustrate the complete overlap between the two disciplines, and it's a celebration of sorts because it looks like there's finally a real job that goes right to the heart of what I love. AND OH YES I love rhetoric -- it's engineering with words. I was an exhausted engineering student when I stumbled into my first rhetoric class: Rhetoric 30, taught by Dan Melia -- and I was a deer caught in the headlights after that.
It was an article of faith that half of the class (which was the introduction to the basic principles of rhetoric) did not stick around to the end, but I really didn't notice. I moved my seat from the back to the front row and came early and stayed late. It was amazing to me that people, other people, really thought this way, and I'd been hiding my bizarre compulsion to analyze communications all these years...and now I could get A's with it. After the first passion, I noticed that my former engineering classmates thought my new discipline was ridiculously difficult -- and yes, it's not for anyone who isn't just fine generating reams of prose. (et tu blogosphere?)
And people were passionate about it, too. Dan hated the deconstructionists -- and he thought I should too, but I was actually blown away by the ideas -- and I'm still deferring my judgment on this philosophy...maybe it's the way communication is indeed mediated by the web...maybe the writer disappears into the text...maybe the reader is the one doing the writing. That's what's going on in user experience one-on-ones, after all. But Dan was all about the page and the podium, not the web. And the medium is the message after all.
The deconstructed web is the coldest place of all (in media terms) -- particularly the web environment of an anonymous corporate site.
So the curriculum lead the little student sheep along the path of the classics -- We actually studied Aristotle in the same way a mechanic would study a Merck's Manual. Here's the piston, here's the camshaft, here's the pathetic trope, here's the catharsis, now you do it. Then we looked at Plato -- not all of him, just a few dialogues, but what dialogues they were: Gorgias!!! My darling Gorgias, gorgeous Gorgias.
Okay, now this is reealy important in today's evil world: Plato held that no one could be allowed to take up the hideously powerful tools of rhetoric unless they had first been grounded in and ground down by the puffing, strutting strictures of Ethics. Like handing a gun to a -- what? an evil person, I suppose. Here's a digression: long long before Jesus and his Good News, Plato was the earliest person I've read who clearly believed in the transforming power of having something explained to you. So, he didn't say that only good people should get to use rhetoric -- his desire was far more mechanical -- only people who had been lectured to about Ethics should get to use rhetoric. I hear and obey, master.
But, you know, Berkeley is always conservative and obedient, so, in tune with the Platonic stricture, we sheep were also dipped in the bath of Ethics before we were turned loose with our weapons. Now, this was in the early 80's, when Greed was Good -- in fact, it was at Berkeley, just across campus, in that same window of time, that Mr. Boesky was busy telling a B-School class that very thing. The rise of the faceless giant corporation -- what are one's moral obligations with respect to non-human entities? That wasn't covered.
Next time: Bambi, the pathetic.
I had a point to make, however -- I wanted to illustrate the complete overlap between the two disciplines, and it's a celebration of sorts because it looks like there's finally a real job that goes right to the heart of what I love. AND OH YES I love rhetoric -- it's engineering with words. I was an exhausted engineering student when I stumbled into my first rhetoric class: Rhetoric 30, taught by Dan Melia -- and I was a deer caught in the headlights after that.
It was an article of faith that half of the class (which was the introduction to the basic principles of rhetoric) did not stick around to the end, but I really didn't notice. I moved my seat from the back to the front row and came early and stayed late. It was amazing to me that people, other people, really thought this way, and I'd been hiding my bizarre compulsion to analyze communications all these years...and now I could get A's with it. After the first passion, I noticed that my former engineering classmates thought my new discipline was ridiculously difficult -- and yes, it's not for anyone who isn't just fine generating reams of prose. (et tu blogosphere?)
And people were passionate about it, too. Dan hated the deconstructionists -- and he thought I should too, but I was actually blown away by the ideas -- and I'm still deferring my judgment on this philosophy...maybe it's the way communication is indeed mediated by the web...maybe the writer disappears into the text...maybe the reader is the one doing the writing. That's what's going on in user experience one-on-ones, after all. But Dan was all about the page and the podium, not the web. And the medium is the message after all.
The deconstructed web is the coldest place of all (in media terms) -- particularly the web environment of an anonymous corporate site.
So the curriculum lead the little student sheep along the path of the classics -- We actually studied Aristotle in the same way a mechanic would study a Merck's Manual. Here's the piston, here's the camshaft, here's the pathetic trope, here's the catharsis, now you do it. Then we looked at Plato -- not all of him, just a few dialogues, but what dialogues they were: Gorgias!!! My darling Gorgias, gorgeous Gorgias.
Okay, now this is reealy important in today's evil world: Plato held that no one could be allowed to take up the hideously powerful tools of rhetoric unless they had first been grounded in and ground down by the puffing, strutting strictures of Ethics. Like handing a gun to a -- what? an evil person, I suppose. Here's a digression: long long before Jesus and his Good News, Plato was the earliest person I've read who clearly believed in the transforming power of having something explained to you. So, he didn't say that only good people should get to use rhetoric -- his desire was far more mechanical -- only people who had been lectured to about Ethics should get to use rhetoric. I hear and obey, master.
But, you know, Berkeley is always conservative and obedient, so, in tune with the Platonic stricture, we sheep were also dipped in the bath of Ethics before we were turned loose with our weapons. Now, this was in the early 80's, when Greed was Good -- in fact, it was at Berkeley, just across campus, in that same window of time, that Mr. Boesky was busy telling a B-School class that very thing. The rise of the faceless giant corporation -- what are one's moral obligations with respect to non-human entities? That wasn't covered.
Next time: Bambi, the pathetic.
7.25.2007
The Cult of the Amateur
I'm going to have to buy this book. I don't even know if the author is just noting the trend or deploring it or celebrating it. Here's my one-line bias: we're all amateurs -- it's just a matter of degree. The rhotoric training keeps me unable to draw that line between expert and know-nothing. In a deconstructionist way, it's the quest for expertise that itself creates the expert, the student who creates the teacher, just as the reader creates the text.
So, Wikipedia has always seemed to me to be a fine place to find a "fact." But that's because I don't actually believe that a "fact" can make it intact through its negotiation with language and all its variants, colors, and degrees of lister inattention. So, this current view of the demise of expertise has me puzzled -- did it ever really exist? Surely we've always needed to be careful not to be taken in by the plausible blowhard.
So, Wikipedia has always seemed to me to be a fine place to find a "fact." But that's because I don't actually believe that a "fact" can make it intact through its negotiation with language and all its variants, colors, and degrees of lister inattention. So, this current view of the demise of expertise has me puzzled -- did it ever really exist? Surely we've always needed to be careful not to be taken in by the plausible blowhard.
7.20.2007
Web 2.0 Expo: Stowe Boyd on Building Social Applications
Attendee Notes: Abby Shaw (abbyshaw@earthlink.net)
This 3 hour workshop provided a walkthrough of the current state of “social applications.” There were about 700 people in attendance and the discussion was lively.
A Social Application is one designed to guide human behavior into paths and patterns, to counter prevailing ways of interaction. These can also be called Social Tools and can be defined as software intended to shape culture. In the “post everything” world, the environment of the social application can be called the ‘new third place.’
The individual is the new group. Social tools speak to the perspective of “me first.” The sequence goes: Me to Mine to Market (see drawing below)
In this case, Market is not just buying and selling, but “something” that is being exchanged. The goal of social applications is to make that sharing more liquid.
While the standard computer interaction is as a large central service dictating the terms of the interaction, the social tool, in order to be successful, must operate differently. This difference can be called “bottom-up belonging.” “The edge dissolves the center.” The dominance of the person and the person’s needs in the market success of a social application leads to a situation where the traditional “large central service” can no longer dictate the terms of the interaction. Only the person’s satisfaction with the interaction can drive success. In this sphere, usability is not just a good idea, it is an absolute requirement.
Satisfy the person’s needs first, then get to the market, then get to the payoff. These edge-in approaches to markets are degrading the power of the center (e.g., the death of newspapers, the decay in television viewing).
“Belonging” comes from a person-to-person relationship, not from an organizational affiliation. Formal affiliations are declining (see Robert Putnam’s book, has “bowling league” in the title.); fewer people are becoming Kiwanis. What’s taken the place of these organizational affiliations are “ad hoc affiliations,” in which people join together to accomplish a shared objective and then disengage. This distinction calls for some defined terms:
• Groups are defined, have boundaries, may have rules, are “symmetric”(?)
• Groupings are assemblages of people with similar interests.
Social tools provide mechanisms to enable groups, groupings, affiliations, etc.
(See notes for more on comparison between traditional “domain” oriented applications and those oriented to serve the needs of the individual.)
Many popular web tools are semi-social or asocial. iTunes, for instance, is a big, impersonal database. Aside from the ability to create compilations, there is no person-to-person interaction. (One workshop exercise was to imagine what a social version of iTunes would be like.) Other asocial or less social sites are Best Buy, and Pandora (now adding changes), and other sites that have added social elements after the fact are: eBay, Amazon, Netflix, and BaseCamp.
These add-ons are ineffective, as the social aspects are not core to the tool’s value, and additional social features are hard to continue to add as needed. It is better to build for the social needs from the ground up.
When developing a social tool, keep in mind that the desktop environment is the world that instant messaging has made. For many, their workstyle is based on a new type of interruptive collaboration. The model is one of being available to help move the whole group’s work along, rather than sticking to being personally productive. This difference in workstyle is creating some generational and cross-industry conflict right now. Is it better to give up some personal productivity to move the network’s productivity forward? Group productivity is a new target: called (by fans) “the 21st century paradigm.”
In this model, the value of the network is the number of connections (? Not sure I agree…?). IM and mobile IM (texting + Twitter) have replaced email for some workers – people under 25 regard email as a tool used by parents and schools – a medium of authority, not collaboration. In fact, kids, always on their cell phones, tend to ignore their voice mail. Ray Lane, COO of Oracle, asked about the requirements for the success of a collaboration product, once said, “Sometimes an entire generation needs to die off before change can happen.”
NOTE: Social tools do not replace the need for or urge towards off-line meat-space interactions. (Personal note: among the mobile, I’ve noticed that texting is replacing IMing for some people – the power of mobility is very strong.)
The social architecture described is completely different from the standard domain architecture now in use, which is mostly based on and centered in the design of the central database, with functions radiating outward. Now, the user experience needs to be the basis. For instance, people don’t want to run a database query, but they do want to ask a question – what they want is to temper the query through a social interaction.
The “mine to market” interaction can contain the payoff: the recommender can be paid for the recommendation. (As is an insurance agent.)
Audience Question: What about the perception of corruption, of co-opting if the advice is paid for?
If the payment is transparent and the value is honest, then there seems to actually be more weight given to the recommendation – the recommender is a professional, with a stake in the game. A key requirement is that the recommender be known to the community, able to stand by statements, proven out in history – open, open, open. Reputation is fragile, and it is an attribute of a person, not an organization.
Another positive example of this is the Amazon affiliation payment – this is not seen as a corrupt business relationship. A negative example of this is a campaign where a corporation is pretending to be a person – as with the Toyota Tahoe campaign (see notes on later presentation.)
What is the abiding motivator?
The wish for “Things” is a red herring (as is the generic “Content”). “Places” and the “People” who fill the places are indicators, but not motivators. “Discovery of self” is the central, dependable motivator – the self is the “still point at the center of the turning world.” Validated by the Franciscan nun who runs the highly popular Vatican web site.
People are trying to discover themselves and you can’t do that without people, so people aggregate themselves into “groupings” (ad hoc assemblages) to engage in discovery.
Chicken and Egg
We’ve got this functionality and no people – how do we get them to come? (Persistent question across the conference – no brainer to me: if the functionality fills a need, they will come – if you need recommenders to jump start the functionality, pay ‘em.)
When does the network join you, instead of you joining the network? (koan, but very important question.)
A key concept: flow networks. Flow networks are those you set up so that things flow to you rather than your continually going to them. Twitter is a (weak) example. RSS news feeds is another example – and older example is any type of workflow automation (as ours for governance) or white collar factories automated paper and form processing workflows. We’re all familiar with being in the midst of a flow network – this concept differs in that, with the “me” at the center, it’s you inserting yourself into a flow network – a flow network that serves your needs, rather than extracting step-wise work from you.
The inexorable power laws
Boyd posts a critical comment in his (popular) blog and within a few hours gets a call from the CEO of the company discussed (Mark Andressohn, Bradley Horowitz). This is power. There will always be more popular people and this popularity (esp with flow networks) can translate into power. (The reach of an opinion is much greater due to social networks.)
Vox populi is always vox humana. And what’s wrong with this type of power?
There will be gaming, people will always try to game the system – but systems will emerge that counter the cheating, if it’s not wanted. You can Digg it out, for instance. Don’t feed the troll is a good technique. Delete the abusers. But the best defense is the mechanism of reputation and “swarmth.” (Swarmth is the reputational warmth an individual gets from the swarm.)
How do you measure swarmth? How do you reward it? (unanswered question – except for earlier note about using reputation to earn money for recommendations, which applies here – also see below.) Harnessing nets: using swarm intelligence (digression to define, using old tale of jar of beans and fair guessing game.) Boyd points out that all nets are not the same in value – and asks the question: Is swarm fungible? No, it is not. Research shows (wish I had citation) that your reputation in one system does not carry over into another. (NOTE: Very Important for Thought Leadership advisor qualifications – should be respected IN INSURANCE.)
When the power of influential people grows, they want money. There is a 10,000 hour rule (wish I had citation): across all human endeavor, it requires 10,000 hours to gain real expertise in something (about nine years of professional time, btw). And people should be paid for their contributions when they have invested in that expertise.
The next section of the workshop focused on walkthroughs of examples of applications and tools that were more or less social, with evaluations of the success of their design.
Last.fm
This is a social application that lurks and captures. You join and you are introduced into a musical neighborhood, first based on what you say you like, but ultimately based on what you are playing on your computer and your iPod. Boyd found out that his musical tastes are those of a 23 year old British woman in Manchester. He finds no overlap with the people he knows and associates with in other communities. This is a true ad hoc grouping.
Purpose is to find new music that you are likely to enjoy and to provide a place for you to review music for a receptive community. Two layers: people participate by doing what they came to do (play music, look for related music) and people participate by creating content that is judged by standing in the community. (See later discussion of view only and creator visitors, ratios, etc.)
On the Chicken and Egg question, they did this right from the start. First created interesting groupings, then let the participants drive the ongoing shaping – the participants define what is a “musical neighborhood.” Compare to the rigidity of iTunes categories. This is an example of an emergent taxonomy – and since it is outside of a hierarchy (using tags), it is an emergent ontology.
This is a social motif, with an underlying domain application. For instance, if you write about a band in your last.fm blog, the site checks the spelling and creates a link to the band page or the actual song. There’s a back and forth in the way the social tool is used. Network effect is created.
But even a winner makes mistakes: Why aren’t the tags the source of the groupings? (That’s what tags are for). Instead, the site uses old-style groups. And, frustratingly, you can’t search for groups that you know you would be interested in. There are some groups with exclusionary rules (have to be invited? Don’t allow anyone who likes Madonna to see this group?)
Upcoming.org
Who is going to this event? (West coast phenom) As a participant in this site, you can ask: Which of my friends/associates are going to this event? You can view events by people attending, you can see a discussion thread about a specific event. The site is focused on one thing: Events, and it is oriented around the social dimension. (Note: it satisfies the needs of all the visitors around event-oriented information.)
Facebook.com
This is the most interesting large-scale social connection site (compare to Myspace and LinkedIn). In this application, you have many rich options that the others don’t offer: you can stream content from Facebook to an RSS feed, you can push updates to those interested and more and more. (LinkedIn is more limited – no stream, no blog, no pictures). Allows you to create layers of “mine” here in one place.
Photos, you can share things you find on the web.
Boyd used social networks to find more work in Europe – nothing from myspace, but 2 nibbles from Facebook and both well-defined groups that lead to new assignments.
(First mention of need to integrate all these multiple memberships, different instances of Me, different aspects of Mine. Call to Google to integrate what they buy. Also note Yahoo 360 as attempt to do this.)
Thisnext.com
Here is the social dimension of recommending cool stuff that people might want to buy. The role of being a recommender drives the whole site – this is not a catalog with a sidebar of recommendations as other sites are. Everything is tagged: people as recommenders, categories, things. The site drives you to participate by recommending. Individuals can become featured content by the richness of their contributions – which are voted on. (Voting is very important element of web 2.0 – Swarm intelligence )
You can see list aggregations automatically because of tagging.
Bad examples
Basecamp and federation of work
Federation of work is great idea – this is a bad site to support the concept. Why can’t I see all my Basecamp projects in one view? Independent of account. (work is an attribute of person, not project owner is his point.) I need a separate login for each project. This is stupid. This uses a pervasive static model, with hardly any flow.
I have no dashboard – and that’s stupid because a dashboard is obviously what I want. I can’t link to other projects – I must cut and paste. This is oppressive security. (what is a boundary case in this context?)
Identity issues
The real problem is in how do we share identities across tools? Multiple logins is an absolute barrier to the integration of the user experience. We need a more fine-grained control of identity, and we need to understand identity issues better: not just identity in the sense of permissions, but also in the control of identify exposure. Who knows what about who?
1. Trusted authority where you can register your identity
2. Being able to control your own identify exposure
Work is going on now with OpenID, which is a unique url that represents you and you alone. If adopted, this would provide a trusted ID authority where you can register your identity. (Many of the apps and tools shown at the conference and expo offered an OpenID registration option along with their native registration.).
Some discussion of the role of anonymity in the online world. Oddly, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (a group fanatical about openness) suggests in its guidelines that if you are employed by a company that will be sensitive (skittish was the actual word) about your expression of your opinions openly, then you should use an anonymous identity for open discussions. The use of an anonymous identity will undercut a key element of this social dynamic – your value as a recommender is evaluated according to the value of your opinions, and, unless your whole online life is through the avatar of your single anonymous identity, you will not be able to partake of this “halo effect.” (and even then, it would be tough to get speaking or consulting engagements.) It’s uncertain how meaningful and valuable recommendations are when they come from an anonymous source.
The halo effect is also called “personal bank building” (note, this concept is in opposition to the idea that reputation is not fungible.)
However, the problem of a single identity registration is necessary for the integration of flow applications. Once the id problem is solved, look for the flow applications to knit all this together.
Once there is a way to knit the whole together, you will see the collapse and the falling together of the different worlds. Except for the little, specific apps, you’ll see no more than 20 or 30 large social apps left. (To me, this is not yet clear)
Outsidein.com
This failure is an illustration of the need to get the tool past the tipping point. Outsidein was designed to be a hyper-localized social networking system. The need filled was “Who are the cool people who actually live near me and what do they recommend locally?” The site was launched too early. You could register, but the experience was: “Here’s Me, where’re the other people?” Don’t race to the market before you get the social dimension right – you will just have to relaunch and you’ll have taken a hit to your reputation that you may never recover from.
Wait for both the social features to be ready and for the concept to be fully functional. Without the social features, the site will die, because it will not have a way to spread. (Very relevant to plan for Thought Leadership)
It is a mistake to see content as static object that people will come to view: High Value Scenarios encompass all types of things, but there’s nothing that just sits there that satisfies a visitor’s need.
Last note on Yahoo: Yahoo provides a host of small-scale examples. Where’s the integration? Where’s the grand synthesis? Brad Horowitz asks Boyd to hang on and wait and see. What is the role of Yahoo and the larger companies in driving this integration?
Blinksale.com
The case of the missing market. Another try at the federated work environment: you put invoices in and send them via email: the recipient can log in and see a list of invoices. Very good for tracking, good for small businesses and freelancers.
But where is the market? You can see the “me” and the “mine.” The owners of the site had day jobs running a design agency, so they couldn’t help the site evolve and enrich – they didn’t have time to listen to the community’s feedback.
Why not charge a small percentage in exchange for acting as an online bank for the online payment of these invoices? That’s the linkage between “mine” and “market.”
Now a new site: lessaccounting.com has recently emerged, and its functionality eclipses blinksale’s. But still missing the underlying market. (Maybe it is all just ad revenue…?)
(book: Everything Bad is Good for You – Who is Steven Johnson?)
Stray Notes:
Place is an on/off affiliation marker.
Examples: Smalltalk (closed community) Message: Tech Writing, Slash ambivalence.
Dopplar (what is?) application: limited alpha, is a simple, does one little thing, whips passing in the night
Emergence and maturity of Tags as an indicator in a 3D taxonomy –aka Ontology: Who is David Weinberger? Community of tags idea.
Who is Andrew Keene? Book reference: “The Great Good Place” by Ray Oldenbury. Who is J.D. Lassika?
Who is Z. Frank? Who is Mike Arronton? TechCrunch
“Community” is a concept that refers to groups? Not groupings?
What’s the relationship here?
Building Social Applications
Stowe Boyd, the /Messenger of /Message, /Message
Conference description of session: Despite the widespread adoption of social applications –- social networking, file sharing, instant messaging, and blogs, to name only the most well-known—creating applications that foster social interaction is hard. It is altogether too easy to approach application development from an information management mindset and miss the greater social context: people interacting to accomplish personal aims, exploring their identity through social groups, and working in online marketplaces.
It is these three contexts—personal, group, and market – that form three complementary and distinct tiers of social applications. Users may opt to use an application for very personal reasons – signing up for a web filing sharing service to transfer a file to a colleague – but they become consistent users, and invite others to use the application, because of the social dimension: how well does the application support the users’ needs for social integration?
Effective social applications bring people into the foreground by making the social dimension intuitive and natural, and integrating information flow into the social. Information architecture must take a back seat to social architecture.
The workshop explores the principles of successful social applications, and presents a Social Architecture approach to model new—or remodel existing—applications. Examples of well-designed and successful social applications—including Flickr, Last.fm, Facebook, and Upcoming.org – are explored in the search for general characteristics and recurring design motifs. A number of badly designed sites are contrasted with “well-socialized” alternatives.
The workshop includes two group activities to explore the application of the approach in small team settings.
Creating social applications is hard. It's easy to miss social interplay and build information-centered applications instead. This workshop explores the key factors of successful social applications, and presents an approach to building them: Social Architecture. The workshop also includes group activities to explore Social Architecture in a team setting.
Conference description of presenter: Stowe Boyd: I am fascinated with social tools, and their impact on business, media, and society. I coined the term "social tools" in 1999, only a few months before I started blogging, and I have never looked back. Since that time we have witnessed the rise of social media, social networks, and all things tagged "social."
I spend most of my work life with companies that are building social applications, with specific focus on design, marketing, and strategic planning. I have a particular affection for start-ups, but I share my love with larger, more well-established companies, as well. The rest of my time is split between writing at /Message and speaking at various events, such as Reboot, Lift, Shift, Mesh, Enterprise 2.0, Office 2.0, Under The Radar, and Web 2.0 Expo, to name just a few from 2006 and 2007.
This 3 hour workshop provided a walkthrough of the current state of “social applications.” There were about 700 people in attendance and the discussion was lively.
A Social Application is one designed to guide human behavior into paths and patterns, to counter prevailing ways of interaction. These can also be called Social Tools and can be defined as software intended to shape culture. In the “post everything” world, the environment of the social application can be called the ‘new third place.’
The individual is the new group. Social tools speak to the perspective of “me first.” The sequence goes: Me to Mine to Market (see drawing below)
In this case, Market is not just buying and selling, but “something” that is being exchanged. The goal of social applications is to make that sharing more liquid.
While the standard computer interaction is as a large central service dictating the terms of the interaction, the social tool, in order to be successful, must operate differently. This difference can be called “bottom-up belonging.” “The edge dissolves the center.” The dominance of the person and the person’s needs in the market success of a social application leads to a situation where the traditional “large central service” can no longer dictate the terms of the interaction. Only the person’s satisfaction with the interaction can drive success. In this sphere, usability is not just a good idea, it is an absolute requirement.
Satisfy the person’s needs first, then get to the market, then get to the payoff. These edge-in approaches to markets are degrading the power of the center (e.g., the death of newspapers, the decay in television viewing).
“Belonging” comes from a person-to-person relationship, not from an organizational affiliation. Formal affiliations are declining (see Robert Putnam’s book, has “bowling league” in the title.); fewer people are becoming Kiwanis. What’s taken the place of these organizational affiliations are “ad hoc affiliations,” in which people join together to accomplish a shared objective and then disengage. This distinction calls for some defined terms:
• Groups are defined, have boundaries, may have rules, are “symmetric”(?)
• Groupings are assemblages of people with similar interests.
Social tools provide mechanisms to enable groups, groupings, affiliations, etc.
(See notes for more on comparison between traditional “domain” oriented applications and those oriented to serve the needs of the individual.)
Many popular web tools are semi-social or asocial. iTunes, for instance, is a big, impersonal database. Aside from the ability to create compilations, there is no person-to-person interaction. (One workshop exercise was to imagine what a social version of iTunes would be like.) Other asocial or less social sites are Best Buy, and Pandora (now adding changes), and other sites that have added social elements after the fact are: eBay, Amazon, Netflix, and BaseCamp.
These add-ons are ineffective, as the social aspects are not core to the tool’s value, and additional social features are hard to continue to add as needed. It is better to build for the social needs from the ground up.
When developing a social tool, keep in mind that the desktop environment is the world that instant messaging has made. For many, their workstyle is based on a new type of interruptive collaboration. The model is one of being available to help move the whole group’s work along, rather than sticking to being personally productive. This difference in workstyle is creating some generational and cross-industry conflict right now. Is it better to give up some personal productivity to move the network’s productivity forward? Group productivity is a new target: called (by fans) “the 21st century paradigm.”
In this model, the value of the network is the number of connections (? Not sure I agree…?). IM and mobile IM (texting + Twitter) have replaced email for some workers – people under 25 regard email as a tool used by parents and schools – a medium of authority, not collaboration. In fact, kids, always on their cell phones, tend to ignore their voice mail. Ray Lane, COO of Oracle, asked about the requirements for the success of a collaboration product, once said, “Sometimes an entire generation needs to die off before change can happen.”
NOTE: Social tools do not replace the need for or urge towards off-line meat-space interactions. (Personal note: among the mobile, I’ve noticed that texting is replacing IMing for some people – the power of mobility is very strong.)
The social architecture described is completely different from the standard domain architecture now in use, which is mostly based on and centered in the design of the central database, with functions radiating outward. Now, the user experience needs to be the basis. For instance, people don’t want to run a database query, but they do want to ask a question – what they want is to temper the query through a social interaction.
The “mine to market” interaction can contain the payoff: the recommender can be paid for the recommendation. (As is an insurance agent.)
Audience Question: What about the perception of corruption, of co-opting if the advice is paid for?
If the payment is transparent and the value is honest, then there seems to actually be more weight given to the recommendation – the recommender is a professional, with a stake in the game. A key requirement is that the recommender be known to the community, able to stand by statements, proven out in history – open, open, open. Reputation is fragile, and it is an attribute of a person, not an organization.
Another positive example of this is the Amazon affiliation payment – this is not seen as a corrupt business relationship. A negative example of this is a campaign where a corporation is pretending to be a person – as with the Toyota Tahoe campaign (see notes on later presentation.)
What is the abiding motivator?
The wish for “Things” is a red herring (as is the generic “Content”). “Places” and the “People” who fill the places are indicators, but not motivators. “Discovery of self” is the central, dependable motivator – the self is the “still point at the center of the turning world.” Validated by the Franciscan nun who runs the highly popular Vatican web site.
People are trying to discover themselves and you can’t do that without people, so people aggregate themselves into “groupings” (ad hoc assemblages) to engage in discovery.
Chicken and Egg
We’ve got this functionality and no people – how do we get them to come? (Persistent question across the conference – no brainer to me: if the functionality fills a need, they will come – if you need recommenders to jump start the functionality, pay ‘em.)
When does the network join you, instead of you joining the network? (koan, but very important question.)
A key concept: flow networks. Flow networks are those you set up so that things flow to you rather than your continually going to them. Twitter is a (weak) example. RSS news feeds is another example – and older example is any type of workflow automation (as ours for governance) or white collar factories automated paper and form processing workflows. We’re all familiar with being in the midst of a flow network – this concept differs in that, with the “me” at the center, it’s you inserting yourself into a flow network – a flow network that serves your needs, rather than extracting step-wise work from you.
The inexorable power laws
Boyd posts a critical comment in his (popular) blog and within a few hours gets a call from the CEO of the company discussed (Mark Andressohn, Bradley Horowitz). This is power. There will always be more popular people and this popularity (esp with flow networks) can translate into power. (The reach of an opinion is much greater due to social networks.)
Vox populi is always vox humana. And what’s wrong with this type of power?
There will be gaming, people will always try to game the system – but systems will emerge that counter the cheating, if it’s not wanted. You can Digg it out, for instance. Don’t feed the troll is a good technique. Delete the abusers. But the best defense is the mechanism of reputation and “swarmth.” (Swarmth is the reputational warmth an individual gets from the swarm.)
How do you measure swarmth? How do you reward it? (unanswered question – except for earlier note about using reputation to earn money for recommendations, which applies here – also see below.) Harnessing nets: using swarm intelligence (digression to define, using old tale of jar of beans and fair guessing game.) Boyd points out that all nets are not the same in value – and asks the question: Is swarm fungible? No, it is not. Research shows (wish I had citation) that your reputation in one system does not carry over into another. (NOTE: Very Important for Thought Leadership advisor qualifications – should be respected IN INSURANCE.)
When the power of influential people grows, they want money. There is a 10,000 hour rule (wish I had citation): across all human endeavor, it requires 10,000 hours to gain real expertise in something (about nine years of professional time, btw). And people should be paid for their contributions when they have invested in that expertise.
The next section of the workshop focused on walkthroughs of examples of applications and tools that were more or less social, with evaluations of the success of their design.
Last.fm
This is a social application that lurks and captures. You join and you are introduced into a musical neighborhood, first based on what you say you like, but ultimately based on what you are playing on your computer and your iPod. Boyd found out that his musical tastes are those of a 23 year old British woman in Manchester. He finds no overlap with the people he knows and associates with in other communities. This is a true ad hoc grouping.
Purpose is to find new music that you are likely to enjoy and to provide a place for you to review music for a receptive community. Two layers: people participate by doing what they came to do (play music, look for related music) and people participate by creating content that is judged by standing in the community. (See later discussion of view only and creator visitors, ratios, etc.)
On the Chicken and Egg question, they did this right from the start. First created interesting groupings, then let the participants drive the ongoing shaping – the participants define what is a “musical neighborhood.” Compare to the rigidity of iTunes categories. This is an example of an emergent taxonomy – and since it is outside of a hierarchy (using tags), it is an emergent ontology.
This is a social motif, with an underlying domain application. For instance, if you write about a band in your last.fm blog, the site checks the spelling and creates a link to the band page or the actual song. There’s a back and forth in the way the social tool is used. Network effect is created.
But even a winner makes mistakes: Why aren’t the tags the source of the groupings? (That’s what tags are for). Instead, the site uses old-style groups. And, frustratingly, you can’t search for groups that you know you would be interested in. There are some groups with exclusionary rules (have to be invited? Don’t allow anyone who likes Madonna to see this group?)
Upcoming.org
Who is going to this event? (West coast phenom) As a participant in this site, you can ask: Which of my friends/associates are going to this event? You can view events by people attending, you can see a discussion thread about a specific event. The site is focused on one thing: Events, and it is oriented around the social dimension. (Note: it satisfies the needs of all the visitors around event-oriented information.)
Facebook.com
This is the most interesting large-scale social connection site (compare to Myspace and LinkedIn). In this application, you have many rich options that the others don’t offer: you can stream content from Facebook to an RSS feed, you can push updates to those interested and more and more. (LinkedIn is more limited – no stream, no blog, no pictures). Allows you to create layers of “mine” here in one place.
Photos, you can share things you find on the web.
Boyd used social networks to find more work in Europe – nothing from myspace, but 2 nibbles from Facebook and both well-defined groups that lead to new assignments.
(First mention of need to integrate all these multiple memberships, different instances of Me, different aspects of Mine. Call to Google to integrate what they buy. Also note Yahoo 360 as attempt to do this.)
Thisnext.com
Here is the social dimension of recommending cool stuff that people might want to buy. The role of being a recommender drives the whole site – this is not a catalog with a sidebar of recommendations as other sites are. Everything is tagged: people as recommenders, categories, things. The site drives you to participate by recommending. Individuals can become featured content by the richness of their contributions – which are voted on. (Voting is very important element of web 2.0 – Swarm intelligence )
You can see list aggregations automatically because of tagging.
Bad examples
Basecamp and federation of work
Federation of work is great idea – this is a bad site to support the concept. Why can’t I see all my Basecamp projects in one view? Independent of account. (work is an attribute of person, not project owner is his point.) I need a separate login for each project. This is stupid. This uses a pervasive static model, with hardly any flow.
I have no dashboard – and that’s stupid because a dashboard is obviously what I want. I can’t link to other projects – I must cut and paste. This is oppressive security. (what is a boundary case in this context?)
Identity issues
The real problem is in how do we share identities across tools? Multiple logins is an absolute barrier to the integration of the user experience. We need a more fine-grained control of identity, and we need to understand identity issues better: not just identity in the sense of permissions, but also in the control of identify exposure. Who knows what about who?
1. Trusted authority where you can register your identity
2. Being able to control your own identify exposure
Work is going on now with OpenID, which is a unique url that represents you and you alone. If adopted, this would provide a trusted ID authority where you can register your identity. (Many of the apps and tools shown at the conference and expo offered an OpenID registration option along with their native registration.).
Some discussion of the role of anonymity in the online world. Oddly, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (a group fanatical about openness) suggests in its guidelines that if you are employed by a company that will be sensitive (skittish was the actual word) about your expression of your opinions openly, then you should use an anonymous identity for open discussions. The use of an anonymous identity will undercut a key element of this social dynamic – your value as a recommender is evaluated according to the value of your opinions, and, unless your whole online life is through the avatar of your single anonymous identity, you will not be able to partake of this “halo effect.” (and even then, it would be tough to get speaking or consulting engagements.) It’s uncertain how meaningful and valuable recommendations are when they come from an anonymous source.
The halo effect is also called “personal bank building” (note, this concept is in opposition to the idea that reputation is not fungible.)
However, the problem of a single identity registration is necessary for the integration of flow applications. Once the id problem is solved, look for the flow applications to knit all this together.
Once there is a way to knit the whole together, you will see the collapse and the falling together of the different worlds. Except for the little, specific apps, you’ll see no more than 20 or 30 large social apps left. (To me, this is not yet clear)
Outsidein.com
This failure is an illustration of the need to get the tool past the tipping point. Outsidein was designed to be a hyper-localized social networking system. The need filled was “Who are the cool people who actually live near me and what do they recommend locally?” The site was launched too early. You could register, but the experience was: “Here’s Me, where’re the other people?” Don’t race to the market before you get the social dimension right – you will just have to relaunch and you’ll have taken a hit to your reputation that you may never recover from.
Wait for both the social features to be ready and for the concept to be fully functional. Without the social features, the site will die, because it will not have a way to spread. (Very relevant to plan for Thought Leadership)
It is a mistake to see content as static object that people will come to view: High Value Scenarios encompass all types of things, but there’s nothing that just sits there that satisfies a visitor’s need.
Last note on Yahoo: Yahoo provides a host of small-scale examples. Where’s the integration? Where’s the grand synthesis? Brad Horowitz asks Boyd to hang on and wait and see. What is the role of Yahoo and the larger companies in driving this integration?
Blinksale.com
The case of the missing market. Another try at the federated work environment: you put invoices in and send them via email: the recipient can log in and see a list of invoices. Very good for tracking, good for small businesses and freelancers.
But where is the market? You can see the “me” and the “mine.” The owners of the site had day jobs running a design agency, so they couldn’t help the site evolve and enrich – they didn’t have time to listen to the community’s feedback.
Why not charge a small percentage in exchange for acting as an online bank for the online payment of these invoices? That’s the linkage between “mine” and “market.”
Now a new site: lessaccounting.com has recently emerged, and its functionality eclipses blinksale’s. But still missing the underlying market. (Maybe it is all just ad revenue…?)
(book: Everything Bad is Good for You – Who is Steven Johnson?)
Stray Notes:
Place is an on/off affiliation marker.
Examples: Smalltalk (closed community) Message: Tech Writing, Slash ambivalence.
Dopplar (what is?) application: limited alpha, is a simple, does one little thing, whips passing in the night
Emergence and maturity of Tags as an indicator in a 3D taxonomy –aka Ontology: Who is David Weinberger? Community of tags idea.
Who is Andrew Keene? Book reference: “The Great Good Place” by Ray Oldenbury. Who is J.D. Lassika?
Who is Z. Frank? Who is Mike Arronton? TechCrunch
“Community” is a concept that refers to groups? Not groupings?
What’s the relationship here?
Building Social Applications
Stowe Boyd, the /Messenger of /Message, /Message
Conference description of session: Despite the widespread adoption of social applications –- social networking, file sharing, instant messaging, and blogs, to name only the most well-known—creating applications that foster social interaction is hard. It is altogether too easy to approach application development from an information management mindset and miss the greater social context: people interacting to accomplish personal aims, exploring their identity through social groups, and working in online marketplaces.
It is these three contexts—personal, group, and market – that form three complementary and distinct tiers of social applications. Users may opt to use an application for very personal reasons – signing up for a web filing sharing service to transfer a file to a colleague – but they become consistent users, and invite others to use the application, because of the social dimension: how well does the application support the users’ needs for social integration?
Effective social applications bring people into the foreground by making the social dimension intuitive and natural, and integrating information flow into the social. Information architecture must take a back seat to social architecture.
The workshop explores the principles of successful social applications, and presents a Social Architecture approach to model new—or remodel existing—applications. Examples of well-designed and successful social applications—including Flickr, Last.fm, Facebook, and Upcoming.org – are explored in the search for general characteristics and recurring design motifs. A number of badly designed sites are contrasted with “well-socialized” alternatives.
The workshop includes two group activities to explore the application of the approach in small team settings.
Creating social applications is hard. It's easy to miss social interplay and build information-centered applications instead. This workshop explores the key factors of successful social applications, and presents an approach to building them: Social Architecture. The workshop also includes group activities to explore Social Architecture in a team setting.
Conference description of presenter: Stowe Boyd: I am fascinated with social tools, and their impact on business, media, and society. I coined the term "social tools" in 1999, only a few months before I started blogging, and I have never looked back. Since that time we have witnessed the rise of social media, social networks, and all things tagged "social."
I spend most of my work life with companies that are building social applications, with specific focus on design, marketing, and strategic planning. I have a particular affection for start-ups, but I share my love with larger, more well-established companies, as well. The rest of my time is split between writing at /Message and speaking at various events, such as Reboot, Lift, Shift, Mesh, Enterprise 2.0, Office 2.0, Under The Radar, and Web 2.0 Expo, to name just a few from 2006 and 2007.
7.06.2007
Wearing Cranky Pants
February 20 was National Mean Mommy Day -- I heard it on the radio. Pro or Con? I wondered. Well, Pro, obviously -- aren't we all better people because our mommies were a little bit mean now and then? Actually, it's when my kid mutters about how mean I am that I am most confident that I am dispensing "deluxe" parenting. I was all for Mean Mommy Day because we don't seem to understand the benefits of crankiness.
Isn't crankiness the inevitable by-product of high standards? When your high standards aren't met, what are you supposed to do? Be sympathetic? Offer chocolate? Cry? Certainly not -- any response other than crankiness would be a betrayal of those high standards.
There's a real up-tick in the crankiness factor at our company lately. When you communicate with your team and colleagues, keep this in mind. I think we're all anxious to display our high standards. And this is a good thing, but it certainly changes the atmosphere of communication. More of us are wearing cranky pants and we expect our standards to be taken seriously.
There is a track to success in some large companies that consists of floating along, staying invisible, putting the time in. When I first came here, I seemed to stumble over these floaters on a regular basis. I came from a career track that required a need for speed, a built-in urgency, as do so many of our new hires. I still remember my reaction to finding that the proper response to the smallest barrier to meeting a deadline was a rueful shrug, a bland acceptance of delay, and a uninterruptable flow towards the car, the freeway, and home.
Well, I remember thinking, as I sank cozily into this comfy view of things, this is something beyond family friendly -- this is downright leisurely, and I tried on a new, slow pace gratefully. Everyone seemed so nice. If someone on a team didn't deliver, we didn't confront, but we carefully, sensitively, found a way around this person's limitations. How very nice.
But after a few weeks of relaxation, I began to chafe at this slo-mo mode. My work is me, not some chore to be evaded, but part of my life-affirming journey. I really did expect other people on my team to do their work -- I was getting fed up with being sensitive instead of successful.
I was in yet another meeting when I heard an employee whose work I admired mutter "GPS" with a disappointed shake of her head. GPS turns out to mean "Glacial Pace Syndrome," and I learned that others among us are cranky about our more leisurely colleagues' casual view of their work.
It was then that I realized that there is a cranky movement afoot. There are people who really want to do something meaningful with that enormous chunk of time we have sold to our employer. So here's my idea: If you are uncomfortable with GPS, identify yourself to the people you work with so we'll know who we are.
Let's all get cranky about the barriers we encounter. Let's wince in meetings when something stupid and obstructionist comes up. An then let's speak with one voice and vote the stupidity down.
It's honest. And it's irritability that produces the oyster's pearl, after all.
Isn't crankiness the inevitable by-product of high standards? When your high standards aren't met, what are you supposed to do? Be sympathetic? Offer chocolate? Cry? Certainly not -- any response other than crankiness would be a betrayal of those high standards.
There's a real up-tick in the crankiness factor at our company lately. When you communicate with your team and colleagues, keep this in mind. I think we're all anxious to display our high standards. And this is a good thing, but it certainly changes the atmosphere of communication. More of us are wearing cranky pants and we expect our standards to be taken seriously.
There is a track to success in some large companies that consists of floating along, staying invisible, putting the time in. When I first came here, I seemed to stumble over these floaters on a regular basis. I came from a career track that required a need for speed, a built-in urgency, as do so many of our new hires. I still remember my reaction to finding that the proper response to the smallest barrier to meeting a deadline was a rueful shrug, a bland acceptance of delay, and a uninterruptable flow towards the car, the freeway, and home.
Well, I remember thinking, as I sank cozily into this comfy view of things, this is something beyond family friendly -- this is downright leisurely, and I tried on a new, slow pace gratefully. Everyone seemed so nice. If someone on a team didn't deliver, we didn't confront, but we carefully, sensitively, found a way around this person's limitations. How very nice.
But after a few weeks of relaxation, I began to chafe at this slo-mo mode. My work is me, not some chore to be evaded, but part of my life-affirming journey. I really did expect other people on my team to do their work -- I was getting fed up with being sensitive instead of successful.
I was in yet another meeting when I heard an employee whose work I admired mutter "GPS" with a disappointed shake of her head. GPS turns out to mean "Glacial Pace Syndrome," and I learned that others among us are cranky about our more leisurely colleagues' casual view of their work.
It was then that I realized that there is a cranky movement afoot. There are people who really want to do something meaningful with that enormous chunk of time we have sold to our employer. So here's my idea: If you are uncomfortable with GPS, identify yourself to the people you work with so we'll know who we are.
Let's all get cranky about the barriers we encounter. Let's wince in meetings when something stupid and obstructionist comes up. An then let's speak with one voice and vote the stupidity down.
It's honest. And it's irritability that produces the oyster's pearl, after all.
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