Evolving Web

Social Media Principle #3 – Economies Have Currencies

This post is third in a series of my Social Media Principles.  The base post is 10 Social Media Principles.

A currency is a unit of exchange, facilitating the transfer of goods and/or services. - Wikipedia

Every economy has currencies – items that are traded or exchanged.  Items to which the members of the economy ascribe value. 

In a social media economy, the currencies are most often a combination of artifacts and recognition. 

ARTIFACTS

In Flickr the artifacts are fairly obvious – they are pictures.

Pictures are taken and put on the site, people enjoy your pictures and you enjoy theirs.  Affinity groups develop around types of pictures or specific communities. 

The cost of entry, though are your pictures.  You put them up to demonstrate your activity in the community.

The same is true for links in Delicious, reviews in Digg, or music lists on Last.fm.  There is an artifact of exchange that the members of the community exchange and derive value from.

RECOGNITION

Recognition is a key factor in any social network.  Ideally, recognition should come from an automated source (“you did x of these last month, good job!” or “Dave Thomas is the #2 smelt canner in the whole cannery!”) or recognition  should come from people in the community (“I vote Dave as the best smelt salter of the week”).

While recognition can be a contest, many studies show that performance in an open and transparent environment yields the best recognition.

Various sites have different metrics for this.  On Plurk it’s Karma.  The people at twitter.grader.com have created a similar score for Twitter.

The key for both these scores is that you need to use the tool often and effectively. 

For blogs, metrics can include number of readers, number of subscribers, number of comments, number of people who link back to you, and so forth.

WHAT WE LEARN FROM THIS

Healthy communities have currencies that they trade in or hoard.  If you don’t plan up front for how currency trading will impact your new community – it is very possible that the game will become based on hoarding.

If you have a company and your currencies are information and decisions.  This can be (and often is) very damaging.  Similarly, if you give rewards based on something that isn’t seen as of value to the community – it’s a value-less currency.  It’s like giving them counterfeit money. 

This social media principle is a strong warning that if you don’t control the economy of your community, it will spin out of control.  If you manage it well, it is much more likely to stay healthy and grow.

Update: See An Bui’s post for Economies have Currencies

Technorati Tags: 10 social media principles,social media,social media principles,plurk,delicious,twitter,flickr,business,management

Blogged at My House in Seattle, WA

Mumbai, The BBC, and Why Immediacy Isn’t All That

The Mumbai Terrorist event has clearly shown us that we have moved to a culture of immediate news consumption.  We thought we were there with CNN, but Twitter and other tools have shown that the immediacy was no longer in the viewing – it’s now in the data collection.

All major news services were monitoring Twitter during Mumbai.  They were taking advantage of a new information source, just like the rest of us.  Some of this worked well, some did not.

And now we have the retrospective.  How did that work? 

Steve Herrmann at the BBC has a post discussing the soul-searching The BBC is now doing after Mumbai. 

Immediacy Has a Price

The software development adage:

“You can have your software fast, good, or cheap – pick two.”

fits well here.  Replace “software” with “news” and we’re rolling.  (at least for the moment).  For years we’ve have good and cheap.  Face it, we’ve always received our news for pennies since the advent of the printing press.

Immediacy has a price – and it isn’t the “cheap” option.  We have fast and cheap now. 

With Mumbai we have an excellent example of a dispersed, confused, stressful situation.  People of good faith were tweeting and re-tweeting objects of news based on their faith in the network.  Most of this information was good, some of it was garbage.

People were looking for answers. Sensational garbage can easily rise to the top because it’s often confirming our worst fears or bolstering our deepest hopes.

Acquisition Isn’t the Only Transaction Cost

News as a product runs on information.  It is true that immediate communication gives news organizations faster and cheaper information.  However, while the cost of acquisition is certainly a major component to news – verification is the other.

Reputation engines may well serve the verification need in the future.  A source can be deemed “credible” based on their reputation scores.  But this certainly isn’t infallible. 

If I have a very high score and am walking down a street in Phuket and suddenly a huge crowd runs down the street screaming “Tsunami!”  I’m going to run and likely tweet “I am in Phuket and running from a Tsunami!”

My source was a crowd of people with no discernable credibility rating other than their panic. 

In an uncertain time, you get uncertain information.

BBC is Introspective

The BBC is doing well to both be introspective after Mumbai and to be relatively transparent in doing so. 

Steve says:

Is it confusing to have reports from our own correspondents, along with official statements, pictures, video, accounts from other media, bloggers, emails and Twitter, all together on the same page? It's true that normally we separate them out - news stories in one place, correspondents' reports in another, Have Your Say comments and links to blogs somewhere else.

But on a major unfolding story there is a case also for simply monitoring, selecting and passing on the information we are getting as quickly as we can, on the basis that many people will want to know what we know and what we are still finding out, as soon as we can tell them.

Steve is acknowledging the transition of the mainstream media from a news source to a news aggregator and analyzer.  Some of the news comes from their highly trusted generators (reporters and informants), but others is now going to come from bloggers and tweeters and the like.  It would be self-defeating not to include these new sources.

We must also note that this is both new and frightening to an organization like the BBC.  They must simultaneously understand how to present this information effectively and deal with the major impact this has on their corporate culture.

This is not SOP.

BBC is Outward Looking

I’d also like to give quick props to Steve Herrmann and the BBC for having many links in his post that are pointed outside the BBC domain.  One of my news site pet peeves is that they have ample inward pointing links.

This small fact lets me know that Mumbai’s lessons for global reporting will have an impact.

Technorati Tags: BBC,Mumbai,Steve Herrmann,Twitter,mainstream media,journalism,microblogging,microsharing

((Cross posted from the Touchbase Blog))

For One Brief Moment, My Followers are the Spawn of the Devil

 

Does this make me the Devil?

Gee I hope not.

Technorati Tags: Twitter,beelzebub,stupid number tricks

Why I Plurk, Again

I’ve discussed this before, but there are inherently different social interactions that happen in different social media tools.  These are facilitated by the differences in the user interface.

Yesterday, Brian Kerr posted this little thing on Plurk (source).  Plurk’s UI allows you to post pictures that are actually visible.

What came next?  A nice little discussion that took 24 hours to mature.  The threading and alerts in Plurk made that possible.  With Twitter, the value-add of the conversation would have been lost.  Twitter is such a temporal tool, without conventions like @ or # tags, threading is impossible.

Here is the Plurk discussion:

Context is often driven by the circumstances in which the context itself is generated.  Your User Interface, like Twitter’s, may have marvelous impacts on how certain types of communication are conducted – but they do not help with all kinds of communication.

There is no Tower of Babel User Interface.

In this thread, the context starts with a pesky cat looped cartoon and ends with a discussion of non-attachment. What @mitten dubs the “kitteh paradox” after Brian defines the core issue – happiness is transitory if you are attached to a certain definition of happiness (cereal or sitting on the table). 

This contextual evolution is primarily due to the Plurk UI which allows this thread to maintain itself over the course of hours or days.  I still use Twitter every day, but I also use Plurk – simply because these fundamental UI differences yield fundamentally different types of conversations.

Technorati Tags: twitter,plurk,brian kerr,laura fisher,non-attachment,user interface,user experience,social media

The 64 Top Social Media Principles

I had been using a short list of social media principles with my clients.  When I started writing my book I wanted to codify them.  So research was in order.  Imagine my surprise when I found page after page after page of social media principles.

The initial research turned up sixty four of the little buggers.  I’ll post my own personal list of social media principles that should make all these a little more concise and coherent.

It is interesting that there are lists of social media principles specifically for marketers, public relations, corporations, musicians, and more.  Apparently, the framework of social media is so flexible that we can come up with dozens of basic ways to interact with it.

These are presented in no order of importance, they’re just how they rolled out of my research tools.

Social media principles | Hill & Knowlton

Social Media principles for a communications consultant - guidelines for behavior to let both clients and the public know the boundaries of how they will use social media

• We will not engage with social or consumer-generated media on behalf of a client without their knowledge, or if it contravenes a client's own policies.    
• We will always disclose who we are and who we are working for (both our agency and our client).    
• We will never pretend to be someone or something we are not.    
• We will take time to understand the rules, beliefs and desires that exist within the online communities we use to communicate.    
• We will respect any privacy and contact preferences of each individual.
• We will refuse to undertake work that requires us to compromise these principles.

4 Principles Of Persuasive Social Media Marketing | Insight Buzz

Principles based on the work of Dr. Robert Cialdini on influence.

Social Proof

Authority

Reciprocation

Liking

Corporate Social Media Principles | Blog World Expo Blog

These principles look very usurious when first read.  I’d suggest interpreting them in a value-neutral way.

Architect a proper presence

Gain credibility based on your targets world view

co-create dialogue where your company reaps the benefit of exchange

Four Principles to Follow in Social Media: Build the Love - ClickZ

Building the love by following simple principles of genuine communication

Listen to your market

Open Your Organization

Value all forms of communication

Expand beyond on-line

Znetlady: Modern Media: Social Media Relations: Five Best Principles

This is actually only her first of five, she hasn’t gotten around to the rest, but this is a good read – especially the part defining what principles actually are.

The principle she details here is: Go For Insight

Social Media - first principles for musicians

Solobasssteve  outlines social media principles for musicians.

Time cost outweigh monetary cost

Don't broadcast

"Get it" before you get into it

You're selling your brand, not your product

Principles for public sector social media | NPSC Blog

Social media principles specifically aimed at application in the public sector

Sovereignty

Access

Transparency

Trust

Fairness

Openness

Ethics

Participation

Integrity

Social Object - SlideShare

Alex de Varvalho’s slide deck on social media principles

Keep it social stupid

define the objects of sociality

objects invite play

to play, to stroke

multiply the actions

mind the bacn

set the "dun" bar higher

reputation display

building social capital

Social Media Principles - SlideShare

Chris Heuer’s slidedeck on social media principles

Be Human

Be Aware

Be Honest

Be Respectful

Be a Participant

Be Open

Be Courageous

PR Squared: Top 5 Principles of the Social Media News Release

Bringing the concept of the press release into the 21st century.

Democratize Access

Embrace Context

Build Community

Be Findable

Ensure Accuracy

Now Is Gone » The Seven Principles of Community Building

Let’s go nation building!

Do not try to control the message

Honesty, Ethics and Transparency are Musts

Participation within the community is marketing

Communication to audiences is outmoded

Build value for the community

Inspire your community with real, exciting information, not propaganda

Manage media forms to build community

• RSS
• Frequency of message
• etc

Principles of Engaging People Online

How to win Facebook friends and influence Twitter People.

Understand who you want to engage

Explore what's in it for me

Create a space people feel comfortable in

Be open and honest

Reward Participation

UPDATE:  I have written my own 10 Principles of Social Media which I believe boil these 64 into universally applicable guides.

Technorati Tags: futurelab,nowisgone,pr-squared,steve lawson,solobasssteve,znetlady,clickz,hill and knowlton,chris heuer,alex de carvalho,insightbuzz,social media,social media principles,social media philosophy,public relations,community building,community management,social capital,psychology,public sector

The Cloud is The Community is The Individual is Life

Yesterday was Halloween. Halloween, frankly, bums me out. 

It bums me out because I almost had three daughters, but none of them made it to term.  And at Halloween, we see an awful lot of really really adorable little girls. 

So I was bummed and at home working on my book.  Some nice people on Plurk started a very silly conversation with me that ended up taking all night.  It was silly, but also personal.  And by the end we were friends.

This morning, I was musing about this while planning my day.  And, on Twitter, I sent out this message:

You see, our interaction on Plurk was not confined to Plurk. As we talked, we exchanged artifacts through Flickr, blogs, Facebook and other tools.

The presence of our artifacts, made short work of explaining complex things.  We very quickly understood each other as real, authentic people.  They understood my pain and helped with it, and I helped them.  I went to bed happy.

So, while I was Twittering the above tweet, my friend Giyen in Seattle was home putting the finishing touches on a wonderful blog post about living openly and authentically.  It’s a very personal post.  I find it very moving.

She says at the end:

So I’m here.  At this quiet juncture in life where I have decided to choose ‘life’ over everything else. What good is social and economic stability when you feel all dead inside?  I want life to be extraordinary.  It doesn’t have to be easy, but it does have to be good.

We all have life’s battles and our internal struggles. But in the end, we learn from each other, we live for each other.  That makes life extraordinary.  It isn’t easy.  But, with each other and a bit of imagination, it will be good.

Technorati Tags: giyen kim,bacon is my enemy,social media,authenticity,interaction,live dammit live

We Discuss What’s Important to Us

What is important to us?  Love, Family, Happiness, Food, Sex, Entertainment.  The order of importance may change from moment to moment, but these things make us human.  They make life worth living.  This is important.  We discuss our successes and failures with them, our elation and our pain.

Today Allen Stern let me know that Comscore released a study from August 2008, showing that 41% of people using the net in the UK actively read blogs.

Number three of popularity were food blogs, with 637,000 unique visitors.  (That’s unique visitors and not total page views). Now, mind you that the top 10 blog categories also include Community – Teens and Community – Women where food is likely also discussed. (As well as all those other things in my list).

Also note, this is just blogs. Review sites, Facebook, Twitter and other online discussion sites / tools aren’t included. This 41%, these 637,000 unique Britons, are the tip of the iceberg.  People are discussing and reading each other’s passions on the net every minute of every day.

What have you done to make people passionate about your business?

Technorati Tags: comscore, center networkds, Allen Stern, blogs, blogging, social media, restaurants, food, love

An event or object of awesome social value.

Social Media is social.

Games, contests and fun are also social.  In the social media world, they are commonplace.  They serve as a means of harmless communication, ways to network, and ways to collect valuable information.

So part of your social capital is how you respond to games, contests and fun.  For example, This week Web Ink Now has an interesting little contest.

They want to know what people’s definition of cool is. 

In order to enter the contest, you need to define “cool” in your blog or web site and link back to The Cool Factor context post.

And give your personal definition.

Mine is:  Cool: An event or object of awesome social value.

What does this do?  Well, several things.

1. Gets people talking about David Scott’s blog
2. Gives a fun little creative puzzle to solve
3. Gets a bunch of Google juice by making people link back to the blog and the page.
4. Raises awareness for the book “The Cool Factor”
5. Sends information out through the social media sphere.

So number 5 is important. I learned about this through a tweet on twitter.

Look at the buzz!  There is no shortage of people posting about it.

Good job on the viral marketing, David.  It is certainly an event or object or event of awesome social value (cool).

Technorati Tags: The Cool Factor,Web Ink Now,David Scott,Social Media,Viral marketing

Capture or Befriend

Social media is social. In order to be social, you need to go where people are.  Where the party is, so to speak.

When I talk to businesses about social media, they want to set up their own sites.  They want to throw their own party.

Parties are a lot of work and you have to clean up after them.  People think that if they throw their own party, they will capture all the attention and people will love them. But the truth is, the focus becomes the quality of the party and not your message.

It makes a lot more sense to go to an existing party and meet people.  Circulate and after a time find a crowd that wants to speak with you.  That you resonate with.  Your message is what comes out.

It’s much better to befriend than to capture.

Jeremiah Owyang has a nice post from over the weekend about this.  He calls it “Fishing Where The Fish Are.”

Technorati Tags: Jeremiah Owyang, social media

Did Something Just Happen?

Understanding is important.  Nancy White talks about this today in her excellent post “Reflections of a Journey”.  She was working with a diverse group of people on a project for the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the UN.  Her group needed to communicate, form solutions, agree to the solutions, and then agree to the final meaning of those solutions.

While Nancy’s experience may have highlighted issues in the need for understanding due to her highly culturally diverse group, this is vital for small groups and business every day.  Even without any apparent cultural diversity.

We should never assume when we leave a meeting that anyone really shares the same idea of what happened.

This is where the intersection of social media and business truly lies. Taking the tools we’ve created for diverse and dispersed groups and focusing them on smaller groups with definite agendas, we can increase organizational understanding.

In business applications using the lessons of social media will include:

• Save the context of decisions that are made (pervasive debrief)
• Facilitate the making of decisions
• Allow people to have a voice who are not present
• Save the artifacts of business (memos, reports, etc) in a searchable space
• Allow people to have and share contacts within and outside of the organization
• Allow the communication of current status for all individuals
• Allow the rapid retrieval, use, alteration and replacement of information
• Allow collaborative development
• Allow rapid views into where a given deliverable is in process
• Allow rapid understanding of what tasks are blocked and why

Without the clarity that comes with a open in-office communication, people are always subjected to “The F.U.D.” (Fear, uncertainty and doubt).  This creates organizational waste because all decisions need to be strained through a FUD filter.  This filter is made irrelevant with open communication.   

In short, open and immediate communication will provide the baseline for understanding.  From there, people can act and make decisions.  They can be free.

Technorati Tags: Nancy white,social media,CGIAR,focused social media