Thought Process : Process Thoughts

Update - I’m not going to get the next parts of this out before the Thanksgiving holiday - just too much to do, but, shortly there after. Promise.

If you’ve read the press lately, watched 60 minutes, 20/20, know anyone under 30 or been to the water cooler at work, you’ve no-doubt heard about the increase in chatter about Websites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn which make it easier to reconnect with old friends and colleagues. Between all the new terms and the plethora of sites, you might be wondering how to get your feet wet in this new world.

Well, that’s what I’m here to help you with! There are a couple logical steps to dipping your toes in the water which will probably make it easier for you to do a couple things you are already doing, and that will pave the way for deeper social interactions if you want to keep using computers to socialize with friends, old and new.

Now, if you’re just looking to passively read blogs or view photos and videos (what we call “consume”) you’re going to have to look elsewhere; Google your favorite interest, hobby or passion and you’ll be busy for weeks. I’m really pointing you in the direction so you can take your first steps into contributing to the fascinating wealth of information which is out there.

So, we really only do a few things on the Internet of social worth -

1. We send and receive messages with other people (this can be anything from email to chat rooms, to recommendations, to various Web site specific versions of messages we’ll get into in the next chapter)
2. We create, store and share stuff we’ve created, such as photos, video, writing and recommendations for books and products
3. We track and organize stuff, like Web sites we’ve visited, messages we’ve sent, music we like, things we want to own

I’m guessing you’re doing some of these things already, at the very least the first: you do email right? You’re probably doing # 2 as well, if you have a camera, video camera, write stuff in Word, paint pictures, etc., you just might not be doing it socially on the Web yet. And, if you’re doing anything in life, you’re probably organizing it, from the proverbial shoe box full of receipts, to a hyper organized filing system to fully web based way of tagging (don’t worry, if that term’s foreign to you, I’ll explain it later) and organizing your digital stuff, you’re somewhere on the scale of being organized. [Need graphic here for the scale]

The organizational part is where so many people get hung up in this computer stuff. The fact that it’s all transparent, and shapeless makes organizing it a challenge for some people who are either very visual, or just used to working in our physical 3-D world. Don’t worry, there are tricks, and some concepts which will help you overcome these obstacles.

So, in my next three posts (hopefully one per day Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday the week after Thanksgiving) I’m going to dig into a beginners guide to doing each of these three things.

1. We’ll send some messages other people on the web can read and benifit from. We’ll probably start at Amazon because it’s pretty non-threatening, and you’ve probably been there. If you haven’t done it, we’ll set up a wish list while we’re there.
2. We’ll create a photo account at what’s probably the most popular photo sharing site, Flicker and we’ll use this thing called “tagging” to organize our own photos, and find other people out in the “community” who might take photos similar to ours. Finally we’ll also look around Flickr and see how you can leave little messages there telling people how you like their stuff,
3. We’ll set up this really great service called Delic.icio.us where we can bookmark sites we find, and use a system basically the same as Flickr to find other people who are looking at stuff similar to ours. It’s really great because a) it stores your Web browsing bookmarks on their site, so you can get to them from any browser on any computer anywhere, and b) the look-up thing can really expand your ability to find things faster.

Then we’re going to take a little break and debrief. somewhere in there we’ll talk a little about privacy and security around this stuff. Then we’ll talk about how to share these things with your friends before moving on to some more socially complex sites and services on the Web.

So, check back, it’ll be fun.

“If we can do that, then the customers are going to feel a deep loyalty to us, because we know them so well. And if they switch to a competitive website - as long as we never give them a reason to switch, as long as we’re not trying to charge higher prices or providing lousy service, or don’t have the selection that they require; as long as none of those things happen - they’re going to stick with us because they are going to be able to get a personalized service, a customized website that takes into account the years of relationship we’ve built with them.”

–Jeff Bezos, Amazon

As I move through the process of helping my day job develop a community strategy, I’m trying to tease out the kernels of unique truth about “social media”. There are many facets that people are grappling with, some technological, some sociological and a few economical. Interestingly enough, the politico’s haven’t entered the arena yet, and quite the opposite, social media is giving rise to methods of circumvention within oppressed cultures like mainland China.

This is all good, but what’s unique about it? What will “stick”, because evolution demands endurance. Most everything people voluntarily spend their time on is justifiable as relevant. When those people are, on the average, intelligent, they their justifications sound more relevant.

Since computers fit so well into the business sphere, the benefit of a new phenomena (like CD-ROMs, or Shopping Carts, or distributed ID, or Social Behavior) is most frequently cost justified in it’s benefit to business - this fits well with the Enthusiast/Professional/Lay-person adoption trajectory which most technology products go through. What’s really the case, is for business to benifit, they have to create innovative ways to bridge the early adopters sense and the mass market demand.

So, to have endurance, a capability (I’m calling Social Media a capability, as it’s everything from software to behavior) has to eventually be generalizable to the broad, non-technical population, because for the vast majority of humans, computers are vastly unsatisfying places to spend time.

So, towards identifying some of the bridges between traditional methods of social behavior, and this new stuff, I’m just capturing some notes for my analysis stage:

• People have always created media: Photos, home movies, poems, invitations, thanks you cards.
• People have always exchanged small messages: “small talk”, sound bites, cocktail party chatter, all the way back to notes passed via foot messenger.
• Most of what is created by individuals is not worth consuming: this goes for music, the written word, food, paintings, etc. People do much of these creative efforts for self expression, therapy and numerous other personal reasons.
• As with Spam, as the cost of production goes down, quality will drop in direct proportion and expectations will be met less often.
  Case Study: in the days of hand written Christmas cards distribution was limited and responses were understandably infrequent. Follow-up was in the form of reciprocity and might have a cycle of a year or so. I believe this is what used to be called personalization
• As input channels multiply, peoples ability to manage the information inflow will be more and more challenged and they will be forced to triage in relation to their need to juggle their other day-to-day obligations.

This is nothing but notes… observations. it should just be up on a wall somewhere, but for now, this is my wall, and you are welcome to help me analyze it.

SYNOPSIS:

Is the phenomena known as “Social Software” ready to be decoupled, or opened up? I’ll go on record saying “No”. Why? Well, for one, because everyone else is saying yes, and I like to be different, but more importantly, because “The Theory” leads me to believe that.

I could be wrong, and that’s OK. I may even be trying to apply the wrong theory to this particular phenomena. I want to inspire thought and conversation here.

One reason I may be wrong, is that software is much better understood then it was just a few years ago, and is behaving much more like modeling-clay in the concept car studio, (thanks in part to better software management and thinkers like Joel Spolsky and others) so a software capability may be able to decouple parts of the value chain while leaving other parts available for optimization.

So give this a read and join the conversation in the Comments section at the bottom. Continue reading »

Riiiiing… Rrrinnngggg.

Hey Hugh, it’s me, Lawrence. I gotta talk to you about this new open standard that’s going to revolutionize the way we drink: It’s called the Dixie Cup.

It’s really great. What we’ve done is wax coated a plain old paper cup, and now it’ll hold more types of beverages… it’s almost universal! I mean, from Grapefruit Juice to a Gin and Tonic, this thing holds up. It’s going to change the way companies think about distributing and consuming fluid.

Right out of the gate we have agreements from Rubbermaid, PG and Acme Co to modernize their fluid distributions to be transitionally contained by this exciting open standard, and Saul’s working on a logo as we speak.

We also see an expanding market for dispenser apparatus; think about it: every house in America with a Dixie Cup dispenser in the kitchen. You could show up at a party with Dixie Cups and KNOW they’ll fit in the hosts dispenser apparatus.

Oh yeah, we turned the cone shape into a flat bottom to increase lateral stability thereby extending its intra-usage utility. Ted’s doing some R&D around optimal radius to metacentric height ratio to maximize stability.

From the smoking cauldrons in Arlington comes an effort to track every electronic, and some not so electronic, bit of data surrounding a persons life. The electronic data mesh this conceives would be capable of making incredible connections between information, the needs for which are being questioned by government and private agencies alike…
Wired News: A Spy Machine of DARPA’s Dreams

Here is a list of links which explain, in increasing levels of sophistication, an initiative which is attempting to make sense of the glut of information on the web.

The plan is to make it so computer programs can make logical assumptions and relationships between resources on the Web based on the semantics of their content. It is referred to as the Semantic Web.

The links that follow provide a gentle, if not brief, introduction to this initiative.

Continue reading »

Only in the SNA category because RDF seems an important vehicle for conecting related information. A good place to start for the begining technical explorer.

RDF Tutorial - Part I: basic syntax and containers

The Semantic Web
Scientific American: Feature Article: The Semantic Web: May 2001
by TIM BERNERS-LEE, JAMES HENDLER and ORA LASSILA
an interesting article from last year covers the basic elements of the semantic Web quite well.

Avatarnets moving along…
Peter Small has come a long way with his avaters as a group resource/info sharing medium. His concept of a “virtual cafe” is being used to some extent at:
Agent control panel
His main site give all the background data at:
http://www.avatarnets.com