It’s funny how just 3 years ago my tech friends would literally shudder when they heard the term; as too often marketing terms get spinned around and completely lose their real meaning.  Think of terms like ‘Web 2.0‘, ‘taxonomy‘, ‘the cloud‘.

But there’s [...]]]> Many times I am asked, what is social media?

It’s funny how just 3 years ago my tech friends would literally shudder when they heard the term; as too often marketing terms get spinned around and completely lose their real meaning.  Think of terms like ‘Web 2.0‘, ‘taxonomy‘, ‘the cloud‘.

But there’s something more about it.  This time.  This term.  Social Media.  It’s been staying and sticking around for the past 3 years.  As of recent, some of us would just dropped the word ‘media’ and focus on ‘social’ instead.  What is it?

The truth is, business and marketing aside, if we look at the intrinic needs of most of us, it’s about to attach and connect, to be soothed and feel belonged.

This is why when you broadcast about your product on Facebook people would block you; talking about yourself all the time you get unfollowed.  But if you provide meaning, value, purposes to others, or even just being plain fun, cool, or randomly interesting, you get more traction and respect.  The internet (and it’s more user-friendly layer popularised by platforms like Facebook and Twitter – which is how I define ‘social media’) is technically new, but not sociologically.  Satisfy someone’s wants and needs, and they would like to keep connected to you albeit the medium.  Be there for others, and they will follow.  It’s too much of a cliche, but really, give to take.

Image on yogicquote

A brilliant presentation by Paul Adams from Google on how people actually manage their social networks online and offiline, and how existing social technologies fail to capture the intricate nature of human value [...]]]> The Real Life Social Network v2

A brilliant presentation by Paul Adams from Google on how people actually manage their social networks online and offiline, and how existing social technologies fail to capture the intricate nature of human value in our connections. Sociologists call these values ‘social capital’, i.e. the value of network, and hence the saying of ‘it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.’

In real life, there are friends that you see as family, people that you count on and trust; there are friends that you happened to have gone through the same life stages (e.g. high school friends) together. It’s hard to mix these people in one label (friends).

Facebook recent solutions seem to rely on encouraging people to set up lists and groups. I’ve tried that. The challenge of this is that your connections and their value to you changes rapidly as well. Friends that you count on at work might be less important when you leave the company, or a better example is if you unfortunately break up with someone, all of a sudden his/her friends can all of a sudden be switched to a ‘not-yet-okay-to-meet-again-soon’ category. How can social technologies track that?

One finding that I resonate with the most from Paul’s research is that fact that when people update their facebook status, they don’t mean to have everyone seeing the status, but only a handful of chosen few.  This subtle, fluid categorisation and projection of personal identity is something that people do on a daily basis, but it is hard if not impossible for technologies to track.

Danah Boyd, a social scientist that I really look up to, shared her research on teen’s risk reduction strategy on Facebook that I found truly eye opening and might have taken Paul’s finding to yet another level,

Mikalah uses Facebook but when she goes to log out, she deactivates her Facebook account. She knows that this doesn’t delete the account – that’s the point. She knows that when she logs back in, she’ll be able to reactivate the account and have all of her friend connections back. But when she’s not logged in, no one can post messages on her wall or send her messages privately or browse her content. But when she’s logged in, they can do all of that. And she can delete anything that she doesn’t like. Michael Ducker calls this practice “super-logoff” when he noticed a group of gay male adults doing the exact same thing.

Mikalah is not trying to get rid of her data or piss of her friends. And she’s not. What she’s trying to do is minimize risk when she’s not present to actually address it. For the longest time, scholars have talked about online profiles as digital bodies that are left behind to do work while the agent themselves is absent. In many ways, deactivation is a way of not letting the digital body stick around when the person is not present. This is a great risk reduction strategy if you’re worried about people who might look and misinterpret. Or people who might post something that would get you into trouble. Mikalah’s been there and isn’t looking to get into any more trouble. But she wants to be a part of Facebook when it makes sense and not risk the possibility that people will be snooping when she’s not around. It’s a lot easier to deactivate every day than it is to change your privacy settings every day. More importantly, through deactivation, you’re not searchable when you’re not around. You really are invisible except when you’re there. And when you’re there, your friends know it, which is great. What Mikalah does gives her the ability to let Facebook be useful to her when she’s present but not live on when she’s not.

What Facebook and other social networking tools provide is a medium for asynchonous communication (i.e. I don’t have to talk to you now, but I can leave information out there, so you pick up when you feel like it), and that’s super convenient when done right (like Facebook’s wall), is a brilliant tool for people to get in touch with the surrounding.  However the challenge for both these technologies and for us as users is the additional work involved in curating our online experience and presence, ensuring what we push out will not be taken out of context or interpreted in the wrong way.  It will require both the technologies and us the users to assert our rights to privacy and to be informed how these technologies are deployed in augmenting the way we interact with other people.  If super-log-off is an option that these teen users want, will one day we see a new social network site that comes with these features built in?  What more can social technologies do to better mirror our constantly changing network gradient?

Again apologies for presenting more questions then answers, but I do truly feel amazing by how social technologies have transformed the way we spend our time.

Recent Hitwise UK data shows that people access Social Network and Forums as much, if not more, than they visit search engines for the first time in 2010.  Again this further proves the point that ‘social media’ isn’t a marketing term, it is how social technologies change the way we spend our time, connect with others and (re)interpret our identities.  Okay I’ll stop here, otherwise I’ll be on a path to write another dissertation about this at some point .

Thought that actually this might come handy to you as well…

From an average of 30-40 emails to his inbox a day, Luis has reduced that to 20 emails a week and now is a *zero* inbox.  There are 2 main drivers for Luis to shift [...]]]> Am at a conference Social Tools and IBM’s Luis Suarez is sharing his musing on thinking outside the inbox.

From an average of 30-40 emails to his inbox a day, Luis has reduced that to 20 emails a week and now is a *zero* inbox.  There are 2 main drivers for Luis to shift his information collaboration hub to social software such as wikis, twitter, internal facebook or even IM:

(1) Content is dead – one you hit the publish button your content is outdated already. Information moves fast – we need to train ourselves and our system to filter signals from noise, and email is not helping at all.

(2) Young people – ‘emails are for grandparents’, they are the champions of Instant Messages / live communications.  In the age of where firewall no longer applied to companies with staff armed with increasingly powerful personal phones, companies will become obsolete if they do not accommodate these new medium of communications.

So as a social computing evangelist @IBM, Luis shifts from

*me -> my email -> fighting my way through corporate membrane*

to

**me -> my social network -> my community -> getting the work done*

What I concur the most is that email does a very bad job in collaboration, but I am not sure if wiki can be a complete substitute.  As although I identify with the fact that focus should not be tool or business (process),  but people; it is a challenge to have the confidence to shift your work-social-network to another medium given the vast diversity of technographic profiles of your workmates.

Key takeways:

We live in a post-firewall paradigm, so don’t even think of controlling information access for next generations of workers.  How can companies build and continue to evolve a fluid and effective knowledge system for now and the future? Think about open collaboration, many-to-many resolutions, and infrastructures that encourage reciprocity of knowledge management, e.g. Visibility of internal facebook-software, colleagues chime in when you’re on holiday.  But start from you – and others will follow.  Have the guts!  hah.

For those who’re interested in the presentation on Wikipedia’s Community deep dive, check out the deck here:

It’s been almost 4 years since I started observing [...]]]> I did a lengthy post for YDN links here.

For those who’re interested in the presentation on Wikipedia’s Community deep dive, check out the deck here:

| View | Upload your own

It’s been almost 4 years since I started observing and learning from the growth of the Wikipedia community… so the deck is actually pretty dense, and I’ve been too swarmed to do any fancy ppt magic – forgive me!  Any comments/questions, just give me a shout!

Oh and Rain requested me to post a photo of me playing with Diablo under Ian‘s patient instruction,

Incidentally the one and only one computer game I was addicted was Diablo I – I killed Diablo when I was 14! Probably more than just once as well.. Thanks Ian for bringing back my Über geek memories…

from IHT:

One of the strangest exhibits at the opening of “Design and the Elastic Mind,” the very strange show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York that explores the territory where design meets science, was a teeny coat made out of living mouse stem cells. The “victimless leather” was kept [...]]]>

from IHT:

One of the strangest exhibits at the opening of “Design and the Elastic Mind,” the very strange show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York that explores the territory where design meets science, was a teeny coat made out of living mouse stem cells. The “victimless leather” was kept alive in an incubator with nutrients, unsettlingly alive. Until recently, that is.

My usual response to outside-the-box ideas that blend arts and science by default, is in awe. But this feels too weird – (a) mouse + (b) living cells that keep on multiplying + (c) shapes like a coat but is living…..

/yike