There's trouble in Virtual Paradise. It's the inverse of Eddie Money.
The first stop, we'll take a walk
Second stop, we'll have a talk
The third stop <trumpet blast>
Ooh-ee!, you better go with me
So people arrived in Second Life in droves. They were anxious to experience the brave new world with such pixelated people in it. They wanted to fly. And they flew.
But then came the copybot, the Mark Furman of plug-ins. The next thing you knew, there were protests in cyberspace. LIttle avatars with little picket signs (many were very funny). Everyone piled on. Shopkeepers closed their shops.
Almost like a day without digital art.
Suddenly, the skies over paradise had dimmed. Their sun obscured by a dank, beautifully screened haze. This is pollution in a social networking environment.
Poisoning the waters of virtual environments and social networking systems seems to be common lately. Digg, MySpace, Friendster, World of Warcraft and now Second Life have all experienced this.
I think this is wonderful and natural. For a while, like a couple years, I was playing Blogshares fairly regularly. Never enough to become giga-rich, but certainly enough to be mega-rich.
On Blogshares, the team guiding gameplay would periodically and radically alter the gaming environment to thwart people who were violently gaming the system. The system was always gamable - usually in ways that were kinda fun. So the game of blogshares was to decode the algorithms by which wealth was accumulated and then ... accumulate.
In mass transit, bus systems (usually quarterly) alter their bus schedules, routes and driver assignments. This is called a "shakeup" in the industry. It helps refine service and move resources around. Any transit planner will tell you that some shakeups are more successful than others.
I believe that in social sites, shakeups need to be planned for and have dedicated staff. That every quarter or so, rule sets will change, features will be added, previous gaming will be calmed, new gaming will be added.
When shakeups happen in transit, some people are happy, some people are sad. Some people rejoice, some people get mad. The same will be true in social networks. When they did this on Digg, people wigged.
They key, I think, is to do it like Blogshares. Involve the community in the shakeup. Make people see the stats behind the gaming and the reasons for the alterations. Invite the community to shake themselves up.
Do this, and all will be well with social sites.
Written with Windows Live Writer at The Northwest Airlines International Flight Club at SeaTac.
Jim, sometimes transit systems like to have user comments on what's going on, and sometimes they're not equipped to handle feedback.
(Of the "don't send us email, send feedback through our awful web site which we never acknowledge" variety)
Posted by: Ed Vielmetti | 18 November 2006 at 03:10
Yes, perhaps I should note that I do not recommend that web sites and social networking tools entirely mimic bureaucracies.
Although, recent evidence indicates that some of social sites may function very much as Ed says....
Posted by: Jim Benson | 18 November 2006 at 06:00