Simplicity, Elegance, and EXPLOSIONS (or other attention-getting things) (3.15.11)

                 Heath and Heath do a nice job of laying the groundwork for understanding and generating “sticky” ideas in Made to Stick. The first step to success (or SUCCESS, as they use it) is seemingly straightforward:  keep it simple. Of course, keeping something simple is ironically complicated (thus the entire chapter devoted to it in H&H’s book). Simplicity, when it comes to making a concept stick, is all about finding the core - finding the single idea at the very heart of the matter (27) – and then “making it compact” (46). One of the examples the authors offer is Southwest Airlines’ motto and goal, at least as far as its employees are concerned:  Southwest wants to be “THE low-fare airline.” This extremely compact statement packs a punch when one actually considers what being THE low-fare airline actually means and how it affects corporate/employee decision-making. Absolutely everything that this company does should allow it and/or enable it to be the airline with the lowest prices. This doesn’t mean that pilots, technicians, and stewards can begin ignoring safety to reduce labor and time costs. Maintaining safety standards is part of being an airline, period. However, when making daily decisions about how the airline should function as a business (i.e. what kind of extra services customers receive, the kind of freedom staff members can enjoy in performing their duties, etc.), employees of Southwest can recall their motto and adjust their behaviors and choices accordingly.

However, Heath and Heath do draw an important distinction between simplicity and oversimplification. According to our authors, simplicity is “elegance and prioritization, not dumbing down” (30), meaning that the simple ideas we use have to be useful for our purposes. They need to be core concepts, they need to be compacted down, and they need to be effective. Heath and Heath suggest that a simple but effective idea will generate complexity over time. Like Southwest’s motto, a simple statement can have a wide-ranging impact and hold implications for a variety of scenarios. In fact, Southwest’s employee motto is an entire paradigm packed into four words. The idea contained by those four words is straightforward, but it defines exactly what Southwest is as a company, as an airline, as a service provider, etc.

Of course, a part of keeping things simple is not letting things become overly complicated. It’s a painfully obvious concept, but one which H&H find valuable. Believe it or not, explaining something simply is not always intuitive. This is why schema, or “a collection of generic properties of a concept or category” (54), prove hugely important. The example offered in Made to Stick is the pomelo. The pomelo is basically a grapefruit with a few distinctive characteristics of its own. The grapefruit is essentially a schema which makes describing a pomelo much more effective. According to Heath and Heath, “schemas enable profound simplicity” (55) because they allow the audience or the receiver of an idea to bring what they already know to the table. When Twitter hit the internet the Facebook status schema was used to describe it. This made a brand new social networking tool not only easy to understand, but also easy to use immediately. People came to Twitter with a lot of Facebook experience, experience which bridged a knowledge gap which might have otherwise slowed Twitter’s growth and rise in popularity.

Ultimately, ignoring what a person already knows or finds familiar leads to over-complication – or perhaps just ineffectual communication. Imagine trying to describe Twitter to a new user without a schema to put it into context. It would be a nightmare. This is not to say that Twitter is Facebook. Its creators, I’m sure, would strongly deny and rebuke any such claim. Still, Facebook is a useful comparison, one which is not worth overlooking. Now, I may want to describe a citrus fruit (or social network) very specifically and, as a result, choose to rely simply on that fruit’s characteristics to paint the most accurate picture possible for my audience. However, if the audience still can’t see the picture I’m painting all of my work is wasted. This is what I mean about intuition. I think it’s possible that, in an attempt to be precise, we intuitively avoid schema when communicating our ideas. However, schema can give an audience immediate access to a concept, and they can provide a foundation upon which greater accuracy and more complexity might be built. In other words, employing schema can make ideas stick in precisely the ways H&H suggest:  by making ideas simple and effective.

                For those of us that are still concerned simplicity is too close to over-simplification, Heath and Heath have a tip:  make your ideas unexpected. Ideas can be simple but still create surprise, and it is these kinds of ideas that gain and maintain a person’s attention. Interestingly enough, we still get to employ schema when making our ideas unexpected. This time, however, we are undermining schema to create surprise and then lasting interest. As H&H describe this process, we make ideas more interesting if we break and then fix a person’s “guessing machine.” This extends beyond employing gimmicks, not that gimmicks aren’t useful. What manipulating a person’s guessing machine really means is showing that person something counterintuitive and then offering an explanation. The second half of this process is particularly important because, without context and the knowledge to make an idea make sense, people will stop caring (or, at best, become extremely frustrated). According to H&H, using surprise or mystery relies on the gap-theory of curiosity. People are not only naturally curious, but they are also naturally annoyed by confusion and knowledge gaps. This means that, when people have their guessing machine broken (when our expectations are undermined), they are willing to stick around to see it fixed and to experience the catharsis that come along with that. I can’t count how many (often dumb) YouTube videos I have sat through because something in the caption or title (or the absurd number of views) made me curious, challenged my expectations, and pushed me to care enough to complete the video. I find videos with titles like, “How did she do that?!” or “How did he survive this?!” particularly effective. These questions make me curious and make me care. It’s worth noting that these are clearly gimmicks, but the same concept applies:  simple ideas stick, but they stick better if they’re not boring.

Give us SIGNIFICANCE (3.8.11)

It turns out I anticipated the move Dr. Howard would be making in the “Significance” chapter of his book in my February 22^nd post, which investigated the concept of belonging in the success of online communities or social networks. I guess I’m a genius. Or, perhaps, this is simply a reflection of how closely related the two concepts are. Either way, it sounds like an idea worth some dedicated time and blog-space.

So, what does it mean for an online community to have significance?

According to Dr. Howard, significance is about generating a “network or community’s gravitas, brand, and reputation” (168), which is to say that significance is about attracting people for reasons that extend beyond remuneration. This is how what Dr. Howard calls “the paradox of exclusivity” applies to significance:  people will value a community more if they are one of an elite group of members. That doesn’t mean that the community is unpopular, simply that it is hard to gain membership. That makes the members feel better about being members and makes community membership much more attractive and desirable to people on the outside. Dr. Howard calls this a paradox because it tends to be a community designer’s first instinct, and most obvious desire, to attract the multitudes. It is a tricky numbers game, to be sure, but exclusivity can lend a community significance and, as I suggested before, make members feel a deeper sense of belonging. In other words, tricky or not, it’s worth it. And it works. Barak Obama’s online community designers engineered his online campaign around a certain level of exclusivity. Members gained desirable information early, making that information proprietary and those members privileged. And now he’s president.

Facebook did something similar in is earliest manifestations. Only students from a select number of universities could have a Facebook profile. There weren’t, as a result, the multitude of members then that there are today. However, there were quality members, and the multitudes noticed and wanted in – and that’s serious significance. Dr. Howard calls the “quality” side of membership “social capital” (171). Communities that can generate the right kind of social capital can make their communities more significant to members and non-members alike. Like Facebook, once the network or community is popular enough, its managers can choose to open the doors to a less specific (and perhaps less elite) crowd. Facebook is amongst the most successful social networks ever created because of that initial exclusivity and resulting significance. Had its makers opened it up initially to any and every one, chances are that a few students from hundreds of schools might have made profiles. Instead, Facebook remained restricted and got the attention of every student from every university in the country and much of the world. Like I said, it’s a tricky numbers game, but numbers Facebook’s are pretty convincing.

Once you’ve decided what kind of crowd you want to acquire for your community, Dr. Howard notes that the next step is to determine how you should attract them. Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Tipping Pointi, provides three different types of conversation starters that community / network builders should be on the lookout for if they want the word to really spread:

-          

           - Connectors:  people who have an abnormally large number of connections

-               - Mavens:  experts in a particular subject (specifically experts who enjoy talking about that subject)

-               - Salesmen:  people who sell ideas (big surprise); people who spread information and convince others to act on that      information

These individuals, collectively known as the “nodes” of a given network or, more generally, “influentials,” are the initial target for community builders. Dr. Howard explains that there are a variety of ways to contact these people – by invitation or by offering an open-access community – and a number of ways to keep those people interested. This means that you need “influentials” to lend your community or network significance, but you also need to make the “influentials’” experiences significant as well. Dr. Howard offers a variety of suggestions from acknowledging members’ accomplishments to celebrating celebrities to offering members a story which translates a shared vision (I won’t list them all here to avoid redundancy).

The point is, what we create should be quality; it should deserve quality membership and positive attention. It is worth the effort to find the people who can connect you to the community you want to attract. In other words, when we design communities we have to do it with a specific set of community members in mind. And that community can’t be “everyone.” If we don’t go into a design project deliberately with our own set of very specific goals in terms of membership, then chances are people won’t deliberately seek out our community and scrabble for that membership once it becomes available on the web.

Believe it. Feel it. (3.1.11)

                Heath and Heath spend two chapters investigating how credibility and appeals to emotion can, to use their terminology, make stuff “stick.” I enjoyed this read quite a bit, and I think it has more than a little to do with our authors’ tendency to tell stories which reveal principles rather than explain principles and offer examples. As I was reading I realized that I felt really engaged by their story-telling and was, as a result, more convinced by their arguments. In a way, my realization relates to the main idea of the week’s reading. That is, my experience with Made to Stick can be explained to some extent by what the book intends to illustrate. There is a real, identifiable logic to the things that Heath and Heath assert, and the best part is I identify the logic in the examples myself. If anything can make an idea “stick,” it’s making that idea come from me, not imposing that idea on me (no matter how valid that idea / your evidence might be). In this week’s reading, the Heath brother’s focus on relating an idea to people – or, more specifically, connecting people with an idea – such that believing / buying into / behaving in response to / accepting that idea is intuitive. This is precisely what I noticed their book achieving with myself, and this is what they discuss in terms of two basic but important “stickiness” concepts:  credibility and emotion.

                If we get to the core of the question Heath and Heath are asking (Why do some ideas “stick” and how can I make it happen again?), we are inevitably going to run into questions of credibility. Making an idea credible is an extremely powerful and effective way of also making that idea intuitive to a person (or, to use a different vocabulary, to make that idea marketable). Traditional sources of credibility, which is not to say out –of-date sources of credibility, include statistics and spokespersons (what our authors call “external validation”). These are, if you will, the oldest tricks in the book, but they appeal to people because they are concrete and because they create and/or validate a person’s given set of expectations. Essentially, statistics and spokespersons paint a particular picture of the world – one made to look very real – and offer specific perspectives. However, the authors note that the more detailed you make that painting, the easier it is for people to see. Though they don’t say this explicitly, Heath and Heath seem to be strongly suggesting that personal experience and personal engagement – audience participation if you will – are necessary for the spread of ideas. What they discover is that when people see, they also internalize; when people internalize, they arrive at an idea and believe it. The same is true for their other credibility tactics, including the antiauthority and the Sinatra Test.

                Heath and Heath immediately follow their discussion about credibility with a chapter about emotion. This makes sense. Credibility is related, to some extent anyway, to emotions (i.e. trust, conviction, hope, etc.), so there is decent logic in the order of their chapters already. However, credibility also relies on logic. What our authors know, I’m sure, is that not everyone is logical. What they (and you) can count on is that everyone has emotions (and that those emotions can be exploited!). What Heath and Heath lay out, though, proves much more complex than basic appeals to personal happiness. Self-interest, as their many examples illustrate, is a powerful tool. Nonetheless, people also respond to things which acknowledge their unique identities and their unique goals. Floyd Lee, for example, does his job well not because he will get a raise but rather because he sees his occupation as important, as something which transcends the confines of its basic operations (in his case, the mess hall). Most importantly, ironically enough, is not appealing to any particular emotion but helping people simply be emotional. Most people will empathize if given the right opportunity. What Heath and Heath suggest is that making people think analytically – such as presenting them with the number of people starving in a given region in Africa – will make them forget to become emotional about information. If data is presented in a way that makes people identify with it and see it as more than data, then chances are they will have some kind of emotional response. Once again, when people can internalize an idea – when they can understand it personally or compare it to first-hand experience – it suddenly becomes much more potent.

                I’ll offer a brief example that affirms what Heath and Heath seem to be getting at. I’ll point out immediately that my example is imperfect – it does not relate specifically to online communities, nor is it a direct application of the Sinatra Test. But it’s close enough...

                I shop for deals on hiking and other outdoor gear frequently. Shopping for deals, of course, means also shopping for the best value. The market for this type of merchandise is massive and, as a result, I find myself reading reviews of products, exploring backpacking blogs, and researching new innovations in equipment all of the time, attempting to be as scrutinizing and thrifty as possible (this type of merchandise is also, as it turns out, ridiculously expensive). In my reading I came across Patagonia’s Field Reports. Patagonia is already renowned for its eco-friendly, socially responsible manufacturing processes as well as for its extremely high quality products. With all of these wonderful things, however, comes a higher price tag. This is what made its Field Reports so smart. Patagonia sends out writers and general adventure-seekers on long exotic trips with its products. These reporters write about their experiences and include surprisingly little about the Patagonia stuff they used. The point is this:  Patagonia is making itself appear credible (essentially practicing what it preaches, or more accurately, relying on what it sells) by illustrating proving to what extremes its products can be taken. It is, in a way, a self-imposed Sinatra Test. If people interested in Patagonia products are curious as to whether or not its gear will hold up in this or that condition, climate, etc, then Patagonia is willing to find out. At the same time Patagonia is also appealing to people’s sense of identity, employing reporters who can write entertaining, exhilarating stories (which, by the by, are another “sticky” tactic) and who are also really cool people. It might sound trite, but individuals who consider themselves “fairly outdoorsy” have a lot of respect for people who are clearly “ridiculously outdoorsy.” These aren’t customers on Amazon that are taking their kids and/or dog on a two hour hike. These are adventure professionals. Plus, Patagonia avoids barraging its customers with numbers and facts and company policies. It lets the products do all of the talking. That’s really the bottom line:  when someone thinks about buying a Patagonia jacket or backpack but aren’t sure they are willing to spend the extra cash which ensures that the quality will be high and that good labor conditions are met in a Chinese factory, maybe they will be willing to pay to be the type of person that uses those products. Of course, other brands do this, but that is well beyond the point. Patagonia, or whatever other company you like, does it to appear credible and to appeal to the emotional predispositions of its customers. And seeing as I still can’t afford Patagonia’s many wonderful products, it seems to be working.

A Place to Belong (2.22.11)

                It doesn’t really matter what type of community you talk about – it’s hard to feel like a member if you don’t feel a sense of belonging. Chapter six in Tharon Howard’s Design to Thrive is all about belonging, which is the ever-important “B” of his RIBS heuristic. Dr. Howard describes belonging as something which can be generated in a community via “shared mythologies, shared stories of origin, shared symbols, and the cultural codes embedded in those symbols” (130). What seems important here is the concept of sharing. We identify ourselves in a particular way based, in large part, on the things we share with others or don’t share with others. I am a member of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). I consider myself a member of this large, religious community less because of the particular church into which I was confirmed (at about 14) or baptized (at about 1), but more because I share particular beliefs with the other members of the denomination. In other words, belonging is very much a cognitive exercise. It is certainly something I need to feel, but it is especially something I need to consciously acknowledge and accept.

                Dr. Howard also points out that those things which community designers include in online communities serve an “epideictic function” (130). Something is epideictic when it functions rhetorically or, more specifically, when it is intended to impress. Thus, being attentive to belonging requires designers to convince members of something. The interesting outcome, however, is of what we (prospective community members) are being convinced. It seems to me that it is and essentially must be one of two different things:  that we are a valued member of a community or that we want to be a valued member. I say “must” because both rhetorical movements are important. Dr. Howard does not outline this explicitly, but the implications of his suggested techniques and his discussion of initiation rituals and stories of origin seem clear.

The first rhetorical move is fairly obvious. An online community must convince me that I belong for me to experience a sense of belonging. Stories of origin, special rituals, symbols and codes are all elements of a community that can make it exclusive. Exclusivity is necessary for a sense of belonging because exclusivity defines who is and who is not a member of the community. By knowing/having/doing the things required of a community member, I can begin to identify myself as such a member and gain that sense of belonging. This isn’t anything new or special. Once again, online communities function in much the same way real-life communities do. For example, I’ve recently begun rock climbing, and rock climbers are definitely a community unto their own. I am clearly a novice, but the more I learn about the sport, technique, gear, etc, and the more often I participate, the less I feel like an outsider. In fact, the more I climb, the more I begin to identify myself as a recreational climber and as rock climbing as a part of my normal routine. The same can be said about the community of coupon-clippers on sites like afullcup.com. I briefly explored these sites and discovered that an enormous amount of time, practice, and know-how were required to become a real active member. In fact, although the community did not require me to do anything to use the site or to ask questions, I never felt a sense of belonging (I was too consumed by a sense of bewilderment). I did not identify myself with the other users of the site because I simply did not understand their language or the majority of their practices. Had I invested the time necessary to be versed in couponing, my participation in the community may have felt different.

Of course, all of this is a moot point if the online community fails to attract members, which brings us to our second point. While the techniques and concepts Dr. Howard offers, from leveling to origin stories, are vehicles for forming group identity, they are also incentive to adopt group identity. Once again, the key word is exclusivity. Like the World of Warcraft example given in Design to Thrive, giving people the opportunity to join elite communities can make that sense of belonging all the more desirable. I go rock climbing and see practiced climbers complete difficult routes and gain the praise of the rest of the community. I attempt to benefit from the many coupon sites online and find users that manage to save upwards of 80% on their groceries. These individuals are members who belong – they’ve got chops, and they’ve got the knowledge, background, and track-record that make them identifiable as community members. Ultimately, belonging comes down to not just belonging in the literal or logical sense (i.e. people who hate rock climbing, for example, do not exactly belong in the rock climbing community). It is about community response. Mythologies, leveling, origin stories and the like are useless unless the application is inherently social because we value not simply being a particular way (i.e. being someone with the skills or potential) but being seen by others in a particular way. Thus, it is not simply a matter of identifying with a story or gaining a sense of belonging for myself. It is equally as important that others likewise see and identify me as a member who belongs.

WE HAVE GIANT BRAINS THAT ARE DOING STUFF WE DON'T EVEN KNOW ABOUT (2.15.11)

In many ways, this week’s reading affirms what the previous readings have all been establishing:  that creating successful web-based communities is as much about psychology as it is technology. In fact, Susan Weinschenk introduces Neuro Web Design with an overview of the human brain, and she makes no illusions about how the science of the mind is a valuable tool when it comes to predicting, or more accurately, manipulating internet users’ behavior. However, I began this week with Design to Thrive and Dr. Howard’s chapter on remuneration, which is a nice starting point in terms of assessing the nature of human activity online (or in terms of successfully designing, i.e. attracting users to, an e-community).

Remuneration is basically the act of providing recompense or compensation. It is reimbursement. And it is a core element of Dr. Howard’s RIBS heuristic. Remuneration guarantees that the user will gain something from the online community in which he or she agrees to participate and, as a result, continue to participate in the community. As Dr. Howard points out, time is valuable, and an individual cannot be expected to invest time into an online activity unless they gain something of equal value from it. This concept exists, or should exist, at the core of community design.

However, as Dr. Howard illustrates with examples from AltaVista and Google, web-based communities, social networks, and/or online resources are often engineered for functionality and developed according to practical business models. This is not a bad thing. That these websites are designed around functionality and positive business practices first, however, is a bad thing. What Dr. Howard argues is that these elements are easy to address – not because they present simple problems, but because they offer salient ones, ones in which multiple people involved in website development will be particularly or specifically invested. What proves much more difficult is, in the midst of practical problems, the challenge of designing an e-community that offers its users adequate remuneration. In other words, communities should be approached with the primary goal of offering something valuable its community members. The business models and site-functionality should follow, but only inasmuch as they can serve a design which serves its users. In other words, business strategies and functionality are necessary for successful website design, but they are not enough to guarantee success.

So how does an online community or social network remunerate its users? Dr. Howard suggests that it does so by providing users with a worthwhile experience – an experience not tied exclusively to the performance of the site, but one which impacts the user on a personal level. Of course, all of this is rather nebulous, as is Dr. Howard’s most direct advice:  “the most important remuneration you have to offer is the experience of socially constructing meaning about topics and events your users want to understand” (57). These terms are all fairly general, and the concept they describe is not a little complicated. Nonetheless, the simple point at the center of this issue – its driving force if you will – remains this:  people want to be reminded that they are in community, to indulge their social tendencies and instincts, and to experientially affirm the information they are supposedly intended to believe is true. This is described as “meaning,” which is “neither immediately obvious nor intuitive; it emerges out of a social system of differential relationships” (56). In short, a person discovers something and absorbs it for his or herself (i.e. a new concept which, for the user, has value or significance) as a result of the relationship others have to that something. It is a differential system because, socially, we determine what something is not in order to identify what we believe it to be.  Now, before we fall into some kind of Saussurian madness, is a good time to relegate all of these ideas to a single term (well, two terms, one concept): cognitive dissonance. Social behavior allows people to overcome cognitive dissonance and to be confirmed in a community such that the individual can actively develop beliefs, activities, philosophies, etc for themself. What a successful web-based community will do, then, is provide a user with the tools for addressing cognitive dissonance and for finding the affirmation a community is intended to provide.

It is at this point that Weinschenk’s address of human brain activity becomes really interesting and surprisingly useful. She indicates that, in an overly simplistic model, our brains operate out of three different regions: the old brain, the mid brain, and the new brain. The new brain represents our conscious activities and conscious processes. The rest, which accounts for a surprising percentage of our actual behavior (emotional and instinctual), is unconscious. Weinschenk’s main argument is that the most effective and successful websites – the most clickable, to adopt her point of view – are those that engage all three parts of the brain. Thus, what Howard identifies through experience as necessary for community design, Weinschenk investigates psychologically and confirms, more or less, scientifically. Of course, the parallels here are not perfect and are not meant to be. Still, it is noteworthy that both of our authors agree that the first concern website manager and/or creators must have is for the human element, not the technological one. For example, Weinschenk looks at a variety of web sites, from retail to entertainment-based, and points out that those that experience more success manage to offer social validation, invoke the evolutionary (and perhaps socialized) need to reciprocate or to manage indebtedness, and to incite the fear or anxiety associated with scarcity.

[random example:  This is true to a certain extent. I rarely provide customer reviews on Amazon because I just can’t be         bothered. Of course , I feel guilty admitting this, which perhaps speaks to my inherent understanding that reciprocation is not only a social expectation but a moral issue (oddly enough, this inclination is clearly not as strong as my other, more lazy ones…). However, I will say that I have bought plane tickets on Priceline.com  after seeing how many tickets at a particular price are supposedly available. Clearly where guilt has a less powerful effect, greed will do. At least for me.]

              Ultimately, all of the strategies that she offers in her book are responding to the specific way human beings think, both consciously and unconsciously. Dr. Howard’s emphasis upon remuneration, though a more specific concept concerning a more specific type of website design, does the same thing. What this should, I believe, draw our attention to is just how deeply connected – emotionally, intuitively, mentally, consciously, unconsciously, etc. – that we are to the online word to which we are now so often connected. It is easy sometimes to consider the internet an amorphous, impersonal “space,” but we are deeply invested in it. And not just economically. And certainly not just socially, though this proves to have major repercussions for our personal, online experiences. Ultimately, though, we are invested personally. To be perfectly honest, I’m unsure as to what implications this fact has for our futures. But for the time being, it might be worth a little bit of (self) reflection.

A New World Order (2.8.11)

        This week’s reading concerned not the characteristics of online communities or social networks but instead what results from their seemingly uninhibited growth and widespread use. Both Here Comes Everybody and Design to Thrive, interestingly enough, draw comparisons between today’s technological, online revolution with the invention of Gutenberg’s printing press. This is no coincidence. What both Shirky and Howard pick up on in their respective books are the implications this type of technological advancement has for society. I hate to write “society” – it’s an overused terms that is nebulous to the point of uselessness – but the fact remains that entire societies are shaped by this kind of technology, which affects the social conditions and possibilities of the day. The effects are simply enormous.

        Shirky points out that mass amateurization is one of the more salient and society-changing effects. He explains that mass amateurization must be considered against professionalism which, by definition, includes a specialized minority of individuals. He writes that “a profession becomes, for its members, a way of understanding their world” (58), resulting in not only a specific body of knowledge, but also a biased one. This professional bias shapes in a major way how certain industries, particularly media industries, operate. As a result, the relationship we as everyday consumers have with media is affected. Shirky takes a close (and lengthy, I might add) look at how this is changing with the advent of social networks and online media outlets. He considers, for the most part, journalism. Professionals have held a privileged position in industries like journalism because journalists have, in a sense, been a commodity. To become published by the reigning news media outlets, a journalist must have the right qualifications, follow industry guidelines, understand a specific code of ethics, and produce work that their employers consider quality and valuable. The trend Shirky is tracing in light of social networking (and a slew of other web-based media outlets) is that, while journalists occupy a professional class all their own, the class of “amateur journalists” is growing enormously. The reason for this is simple: you don’t need to go through the “official channels” to publish your work. Now practically anyone with a computer and an internet connection can publish ideas to which, for all intents and purposes, the entire world can have access.

        This is of course not to say that anything posted on the internet will gain a massive audience. In fact, the opposite is true. There is so much media now available, that most of what exists online is only seen by a fraction of internet users. Nonetheless, this has major implications for the traditional flow of information. While material is, in professional settings, filtered and then published, the internet allows people to publish without any interference or oversight. “From now on,” Shirky writes, “news can break into public consciousness without the traditional press weighing in” (64). Wikipedia was a second important example offered in the Shirky’s book. A team of amateurs essentially provides the material required to make Wikipedia happen. It works because the content is understood as a process, not a product. Of course, filtering still happens. Now, it is simply up to the public at large, the prospective audience, to do the filtering. This is true on sites like Flickr.com or allpoetry.com, and especially true on Wikipedia where any and everyone can edit articles. Ultimately, amateurs now have publishing outlets at their disposal, but relatively few receive particularly grand amounts of attention. In other words, material put online receives an audience once the people determine that it deserves an audience.

        Shirky distinguishes this material from professional material – the difference between what you might discover on a blog and what you would read on the New York Time’s website – and specifies the former as user-generated content. However, many people who make use of the publishing capabilities offered by the internet are not looking for the kind of attention or necessarily the audience that traditional media outlets would generate. Wikipedia is proof of that. No money changes hands, and few if any contributors receive enormous amounts of credit for their work. It boils down to the goals and shared interest of the community that makes the site viable. It is important to those users, so it is worth pursuing without the promise of credit or. What is interesting, however, is that much of this material, particularly what is found on social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace, is not intended for wide audiences at all. It is essentially the equivalent of private conversations but “now it’s done in the same medium as professionally produced material” (86). What Shirky is closing in upon is the prevalence of these sites and their growing ubiquity, particularly among young people. Very soon, a generation that will not know what a world without these technological capabilities is like will be running, and most likely adapting, information industries for good. This is the point at which, according to Shirky, the technology becomes not simply ubiquitous but invisible.

        What I find so interesting, and admittedly troubling, about this revolution is the institutional affects it will undoubtedly have. Dr. Howard acknowledges this problem specifically, noting that “technologies may change rapidly, human beings don’t” (207). He also astutely points out that our thinking about technology needs to change. We can’t think technologically; we must think sociologically. (His example concerning Hiltz and Turoff proves that this type of thinking is effective, even in terms of predicting what the future of technology will look like because ultimately what technology does will shape and be shaped by the society into which it is introduced.) What I wonder, even more than what issues online community managers can expect to face as their communities continue to grow and continue to have more influence, is how our thinking about communications is going to change. Or, perhaps more specifically, if we are doing enough now to revolutionize our thinking along with our technology. (I realize that I’m spinning my wheels here, but I’ll land my point momentarily.)

        While I find the versatility of sites like Twitter and the ability of its users to affect real political change astounding (as Dr. Howard recognizes in Design to Thrive), I cannot help but recognize that we lack professional codes for handling this type of communication. I was a camp counselor a few years ago, and one of my campers friended on me Facebook once the summer ended. I now receive updates concerning her life constantly, including a very heated and very public argument between herself and a peer via status updates and comments. Granted, only friends of this girl will see these updates, but what business does a middle school student really have airing her dirty laundry for what I imagine are hundreds of “friends” to see online? Dr. Howard and Clay Shirky are both right to note that widespread publishing capabilities are changing society as we know it. But are we, individually, changing along with it? Are we educating young people, like my former camper, about privacy and about the appropriate ways to deal with anger? Or are we being inundated with ways to very publicly say what we think while still feeling anonymous? This is what concerns me. We publish ideas, even for a few people, on a massive and seemingly faceless online system, but we forget that what is published is often personal and is very much available to any interested audience. I am absolutely not advocating censorship or condescension of young people. I truly believe that increased freedom of expression is a good thing. Still, I cannot help but think that we sometimes use this as an excuse for avoiding some serious self-reflection and even more serious self-editing.

Making Friends, Keeping Promises (2.1.11)

                The final chapter of Here Comes Everybody, much like the rest of the book, goes about laying out the practical problems and solutions of organizing people in a digital, technology driven age. He argues that, for a group to operate effectively (or simply to survive), it must have “a plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain with the users” (Shirky 260). This is not so hard to believe, and I agree with the logic Shirky is offering here. However, I did realize whilst reading that something about his system of success was troubling. I discovered it was a matter not so much of Shirky’s reasoning but of his chosen labels. In my opinion, “promise” is a somewhat misleading (or perhaps more accurately, a confusing) term for what is essentially the group’s reason for existing. On another, less essential note, I also felt that “promise” seemed much too similar to “bargain,” a completely distinctive concept concerning the terms to which users of a group are willing to agree for the sake of the group’s practical, operational success. The similarity of terms only seemed to add to the confusion. [For the sake of comprehensiveness, it’s worth noting that I had no issues with “tools,” which made sense the first time around.]

The difference, as Shirky describes it, is that the promise precedes the bargain because it is essentially the logical framework behind the group’s operations; it is why people join and why people stick around. Flickr’s inherent promise to its users, for example, is that users can share photography and, if that photography is worthy, gain praise from an impressed audience of other photography enthusiasts. Ultimately, this is why the group exists, and to call that reason a “promise” somehow seems to detach it from the group’s logical being. In other words, a promise is something that I would think would be established after a group’s existence, but the promise as it is described in Here Comes Everybody is inextricably linked to and necessary for such existence. Take another example. Our own class blog is, to some extent, representative of a small community. Through the blog we are promised a forum for parsing out difficult topics and the response and collaboration of our peers. All of this is to foster learning, comprehension, discussion, and to ultimately enrich our English 496 course experience. But this promise is also inherent to the blog’s existence. Without this promise – or as I would prefer to call it, logic – the blog would not exist or it would simply be a different blog.

However, despite my own reservations about the word’s ability to accurately express what Shirky is describing, his use of “promise” does prove strategic and does speak to the wider issues and/or phenomenon that this book is intended to address. A promise is suggestive of a relationship, which is ultimately what group dynamics are all about. People need to be fostered into a relationship with the social network and/or community to become a true member, all of which requires a conscious effort on the group’s part and a conscious decision on the individual user’s part. Shirky time and again emphasized in this chapter that a group’s value is born out of its participating members, not out of its potential action (i.e. it’s “promise”) or its devices (i.e. it’s “tools”). Ultimately, this final chapter sends the reader to the book’s front cover which states that “Revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new technology, it happens when society adopts new behaviors.” Shirky offers the keys to group success but cannot do so without highlighting the individual, personal, and very human factors associated with group development. Online networks and web-based communities are fantastic resources, but they are useless without real, viable users. Here Comes Everybody is about “the power of organizing without organizations” but proves that just because a group is not defined by geography or physical space does not mean that it somehow lacks connection to the real world. Technology does not drive such groups; people do.

While I still take issue with some of Shirky’s word choice, I do have an appreciation of the bigger picture he’s painting, which is why the final chapter sets up the epilogue so nicely. In effect, the epilogue once again illustrates that people are at the center of any kind of technological advancement. I find his discussion of new technologies particularly poignant. Why was birth control a more drastic and arguably impressive advancement than space travel? Birth control affects real people in a real way. It offered personal freedom and forced people to think about their behavior in light of increased options and outcomes. This is not to say that space travel is unimportant. However, it did not change people’s (or most people’s) thinking or behavior in a major way. All of which is to say that Shirky’s most central point is worth our attention (because it’s about us). Social tools have and continue to foster enormous change but have and can do so because they represent what makes change possible in the first place – human organization. As our ability to organize and act together develops, ever-aided by new technologies, we cannot, it seems, underestimate the potential that we (not technology) have to change the world.

A Murder of Crows (1.25.11)

This week's reading is all about how people organize themselves and of what the organizations people form are capable. While I am disappointed we lack a more inventive collective noun than "community" or "network," the apparent distinction between online communities and social networks proves very telling of not only how we use technology, but also how and to what effect we interact with one another.

The selections from Design to Thrive did a nice job laying out basic information concerning first why businesses are interested and how they can benefit from use of online groups. Reasons range from inter-office or inter-department information sharing to customer service and retention, to institutional knowledge preservation and are discussed in detail in Chapter 3. Regardless of the reason for investing in this type of online technology, however, Dr. Tharon makes clear from the outset of his book that such technology is only as useful as its implementation. He provides what he calls a heuristic for approaching online grouping resources and for developing designs which make the very most out of this increasingly important and prevalent technology:  remuneration, influence, belonging, and significance (RIBS).

The first few chapters of Here Comes Everybody focus on much the same material as Design to Thrive and, like Design to Thrive, suggests that the real difference between online communities and social networks lies in the difference in the strengths of the relationships they promote. Social networks put the individual at the center of the relationships being formed, all (or perhaps most) of which are unique and handpicked by the individual user. As a result, according to Clay Shirky, the secondary relationships within a network – those relationships that exist beyond and as a result of the primary relationships chosen in the network (i.e. mutual friends on Facebook) – are not very strong. I tend to think of dating/matchmaking websites such as Match.com or eHarmony.com as revealing social networks in that they their supposed innovation is the ability to put people in relationship with one another. However, these websites are simply doing what any social network is engineered to do. Granted, there is specificity and intentionality involved in a dating site that is (or is often) lacking in other social networks, but I believe that the deliberate search for a significant other via such websites has as much to do with advertising as it has to do with the basic engineering of the network. In fact, I would be surprised if many of us do not know or do not know of at least one or two people who have entered into romantic relationships as a result of connections made on Facebook or Myspace. These are not dating websites, but they are social networks and, as such, are intended to connect people together and foster the development of individual relationships.

In communities, however, things operate much differently. The individual chooses or is offered membership based on the larger group’s set of shared values. The individual defines his or her participation in a community by the larger group rather than by individual relationships and enters into a collection of individuals in which no one is as the center. As such, a member of a community shares secondary relationships with the other community members (relationships by virtue of membership in the same community) and thus also shares similar values, goals, and beliefs. I’ve become familiar over the past few years with an ever growing and diversifying online community of coupon clippers and smart shoppers. While there are multiple sites to what one might argue are multiple communities, all of these websites, such as www.afullcup.com or dealcatcher.com, are devoted to the sharing of new deals, coupons, strategies for saving money. The relationships formed in this community serve the community’s greater purpose and are anchored by a strong set of shared circumstances, perspectives, and/or goals.

What any of these organizations is capable of doing is ultimately determined by these very relationships (or put another way, how people understand their relationships). These activities include sharing, cooperation, and collective action. Because cooperation and collective action are both more complicated than sharing, these activities are accomplished much more easily by a community in which people have already established relationships that promote cooperation complex organization. This is essentially what Shirky devotes the weight of his introductory chapters to exploring. He suggests that “the desire to be part of a group that shares, cooperates, or acts in concert is a basic human instinct” and that this instinct has “always been constrained by transaction costs” (54). Indeed, organization seems to be a part of humanity’s natural order and proves absolutely essential to business development, to productivity, to innovation, etc. Nonetheless, there is a limit to any organization’s usefulness simply because the larger the organization, the more difficult it is to manage and to fund.

What is so fascinating and proves so crucial to the fundamental (and potentially unsurprising) information revealed in the openings of Design to Thrive and Here Comes Everybody, is that all of the organizational and connective capacity of the internet is being harnessed to quite simply bring people together and to fulfill a basic need to collect and share and be in relationship with one another. What both of these books shrewdly acknowledge is that behind the computer screen lies a vast collection of individual people – people who operate under the same desire to connect. What is truly exciting about increasing number of networks and communities online today is that they reflect a massive potential – potential to share, to cooperate, and collectively act. This potential, as Shirky notes, has perhaps been stymied by practical constraints in the past but is entering uncharted territory now that “group-forming has gone from hard to ridiculously easy” (54). In other words, given our clear tendency and inclination to form relationships and to organize, what is it we as a race are going to discover or accomplish now that we have the opportunity to establish relationships virtually everywhere?

Narrative (1.18.11)

                Narrative is something everyone should think about. I believe this is true for two reasons. First, I study literature and thus think about, write about, and complain about narrative all the time. As such, clearly, everyone else should be thinking about it too. Second, and perhaps more importantly, stories are quite literally how we engage with the world. If literature has taught me anything, it is that stories are an important method of self-identification. Novels are powerful things because they show us that we affirm our own significance within narratives; a story provides a framework wherein we can establish an identity, pinpoint a role, and identify our relationships to others.

                So in terms of the week’s readings, I’m on board. Stories = important. Agreed.

                However…

                I have to admit that I was not gripped by the selections from Squirrel Inc. or Neuro Web Design. Granted, these books are not about ontology or literature, so my expectations when it comes to the importance of story-telling are admittedly skewed. And the information presented is certainly valid. I believe that the connection drawn between storytelling online and creating a social environment in Neuro Web Design is an astute one. The inherent implication here is that the web is a place that web designers want people to actively inhabit. Images, unsurprisingly, play an important role because they register with a person’s experienced reality. Stories naturally encourage this kind of behavior. [Side note:  I noticed that on Clemson’s student page, www.clemson.edu/students, stories about students and life at Clemson University, along with corresponding photographs, are constantly run across the top banner. It’s a little eerie to think too long or hard about this, but it seems to reason that even when we are online we are being reminded that we are a part of the Clemson family and should be in touch with that element of our lives constantly. It seems to be a lesson in interaction and integration. A link, by the way, appears to the bottom left of the photo which reads, ‘Tell us your story!’] I can say the same about Diana’s story in Squirrel Inc. Making an idea useful and effective requires, to some extent, the ability to make individuals take personal ownership of that idea – to relate to it in a significant, visceral, natural way.

                On the whole, however, I found these readings rather obvious. This is perhaps naïve of me. I will allow that it is possible that the writers and editors of these books have presented these concepts so simply and effectively that I have been tricked into adopting the ideas as my own (weaving them into my own narrative, if you will). Nonetheless, I found that Made to Stick was a much more engaging, surprising, and, as a result, convincing read.

[CAVEAT:  Again, nothing seemed particularly erroneous about the other texts; I agree in general. I simply didn’t find myself viscously nodding my head in agreement as I read or shouting, “Yeah! Wow! That makes sense!” Of course, Neuro is more of an instructional book which answers specific questions which address specific web design issues – it’s just not designed to be particularly entertaining. As for Squirrel Inc., I’m perhaps just not a fan of the writing style. Or, for that matter, the idea that squirrels are super intelligent creatures with the ability to organize and effect major change unbeknownst to humans. Which leads to a second CAVEAT:  I am a huge snob and have possibly been seduced by the well-advertised fact that the authors of Made to Stick are directly associated with Harvard and Stanford University. This doesn’t necessarily diminish any of the points that follow (though maybe it should), but it does give you a sense of my perspective.]

I wonder, now retrospectively writing about these excerpts, if Made to Stick proved meaningful to me because, in its own way, it practiced what all of the books are getting at:  people relate to stories. I appreciated that this particular book told me the story of two brothers investigating the “stickiness” concept and invited me into the story by incorporating other narratives and characters and ideas with which I am familiar and interested. I, for instance, am along with the rest of America well acquainted with Jared and his successful Subway diet. Combine this with ample research, and I find myself more willing to accept their SUCCESs model and to forgive their self-proclaimed corny-ness. Of course, Squirrel Inc. tells a (mostly) relatable story as well. What I think Heath and Heath do that Denning does not is tell me a story about me. Made to Stick explores the human brain, visualization, and simulation, offering a brief narrative about why the stories work – essentially about why I am the way I am.

Another lesson learned from literature (one I believe is vital for exercising narrative as a learning, leading, advertising, or publishing tool):  we ultimately need and rely on stories to understand us.