13. LESSON 5: CHOOSE IT ‘CAUSE YOU NEED IT, NOT ‘CAUSE IT’S NEW Threaded Conversation Support community of practice by enabling group conversations that can be easily overheard; support Q&A Chat, IM, & VoIP, Videoconference Collaborate or discuss in real time either one-on-one or in a small group; build strong social ties Blog, Microblog Disseminate time-sensitive content and solicit reactions by readers; build a reputation Wiki Create and maintain community-authored content Social Networking Help people find, maintain, and benefit from their social relationships Social Sharing Share & lean about items (videos, photos) or content (bookmarks, articles) of interest Virtual World, MMOG Simulate 3D world and engage in rich social experiences Idea Generation Generate and assess new ideas
Images represent two key characteristics of social media Left: Conversation (in this case between Jim Henson and Kermit) Right: Large-scale (those are 50,000 cupcakes) CASCI stands for Center for the Advanced Study of Communities and Information - a new research center at UMD that I direct - see http://casci.umd.edu
Image is of the Berlin wall being taken down. Companies often try to wall in users in order to capitalize on their data and keep them around (economists call this “lock-in”). However, many web developers and even companies such as Google have supported tools that make it easier to share social data (through RSS feeds and other open APIs) in new ways and even recombine data from disparate sources (e.g., through mashups).
I want to take a moment to set the stage for the rest of my presentation today. As you are aware, the recent past has been coined the “participation age” due to the success of many volunteer-based community sites such as Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg, YouTube. Although a bit controversial, Time Magazine decided that the person of the Year for 2006 was “You” – suggesting that the countless micro-contributions of typical individuals to these community sites have a significant and lasting effect on the world. “ It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before.”
Like many social media sites that do things well, Kiva: Connects people in meaningful and personal ways across time and space Uses openness (in their case sharing loan amounts and payback rates) to encourage good behavior (like high payback rates) Scales well - it is designed for mass participation; the more participants there are the better it works These simple differences completely transform the user experience for those lending and receiving
The image on the left is the Usenet group for knitters. The one on the right is a web 2.0 version of the same. What is different? Size - 931 registered users to 354,512 registered users [is more better? Not necessarily. Clearly social interaction is not easily scalable and has limits. However, different technical infrastructures support more users better] Reach - consider the topic for a moment. In the early 90s when Usenet was thriving, there may not have been as many technologically savvy spinsters. Now, as digital tools have become commonplace, it only seems natural that there would be a group of over 1/3rd of a million spinsters. Nature of Interaction - not just about asynchronous conversations. Can organize and manage threads, “Friend” others, comment, show book collections, private message, use forums (still there), etc. Consider for a moment the many different flavors of social media and how dramatically different the sociality on each one! Consider how social interaction occurs on a wiki, blog, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, del.icio.us, eBay, Last.fm, Second Life, iPhone). We can play with anonymity, recommend people who you are likely to know or have similar music taste with, store your reputation on eBay, and a host of other strategies to modify the social interaction that we’re accustomed to. People and artifacts are increasingly combined into interesting combinations.
Reuse of others’ content and information is still the most common use. Whether we’re solving a technical problem by searching through past technical help sessions in a Linux help forum, getting a new idea from seeing another’s pair of knitted baby booties, or finding out which Harry Potter character your High School friend is on Facebook, the fact that we can “overhear” the conversations of others is one of the major draws of the Internet, both then and now. Participation is skewed, with most people inactive or only peripherally involved and a small percentage of people performing the majority of the work The internet is ultimately a social place where all of the different personalities, problems, and other social behaviors we’re so accustomed to will emerge. See http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/lonelyguy.htm for more images. Thanks to Mike Reed.
We can think of social media tools as providing an infrastructure upon which social interaction occurs. Just as a building layout shapes the movements of people, or a planned garden shapes the environment, the socio-technical infrastructure shapes the ways that we interact.
No social media tools or platform should be chosen until you have a clear sense of your needs and goals. You should also choose a platform that your users are familiar with or willing to learn.
Image is of the Berlin wall being taken down. Companies often try to wall in users in order to capitalize on their data and keep them around (economists call this “lock-in”). However, many web developers and even companies such as Google have supported tools that make it easier to share social data (through RSS feeds and other open APIs) in new ways and even recombine data from disparate sources (e.g., through mashups).
DiabetesDaily (http://www.diabetesdaily.com/) is an example of a site that incorporates many social media features such as bloggers (featured and members), discussion forums, RSS feeds, and a wiki. It also demonstrates how content can be pulled in from RSS feeds and made available to other sites via RSS feeds. It also shows how videos hosted elsewhere (such as on YouTube) can be “embedded” into a website, and how a search widget can be used (the custom search widget provided by Google allows you to specify a subset of content that is searched - in this case just content on their site is searched).
Examples of Facebook Apps (on left) and widgets (on right) that can be added to blogs, social networking profile pages, etc.
There is a great need for individuals with technical and social know-how. We find that iSchools have been particularly good at filling this niche. Only a handful of classes discuss the design of online communities and several are housed in iSchools.