The recent issues around Twitter have led me to ponder how companies can cross the chasm as their product appeal grows from the innovators and early adopters to bring in the early majority without jumping the shark.

There are many different issues to explore here, but given that it is Saturday morning of Memorial Day weekend, and I should really be getting on the road for a camping trip, I’ll try to have a brief exploration of the issues here, and then, perhaps, explore them in more detail later on.

To me, the interesting topic to explore is how the growth affects the dynamics of the company, both with the management of the company, and the larger group of stakeholders.

Yesterday saw reports that Twitter has received $15 in second round financing. How will Ev and Biz handle the influx of cash, the management of new employees, the dealing with venture capitalists, and other issues that second round financing can bring in? Based on recent tweets by them, it looks like they will handle it nicely by going sailing together and getting pleasantly tipsy.

However, not every company handles this well and the group dynamics within the upper management of technology companies can get pretty nasty. Years ago, I worked with a management consultant who introduced me to many issues in group dynamics. I learned about the Tavistock and AK Rice Institute and their relationship to the Group Relations tradition, the work of Wilfred Bion, and the The International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations (ISPSO). She has gone on to form a consultancy, CenterNorth that focuses on “multidisciplinary executive coaching, change management and strategy consultancy”. I would love to explore how to approach the changes that a management team faces as their company crosses the chasm, but that is better left for Sharon and her team.

Instead, I want to focus on some of the discussions that have taken place amongst the stakeholders of Twitter. These are users of Twitter that have been discussing the recently frequently occurring outages, and the issues of Twitter’s Terms of Service.

At Computers, Freedom and Privacy yesterday, Elizabeth Englander and Ann Bartow led a great discussion about Hate Speech and Oppression in Cyberspace. Stakeholders of any emerging social site online are likely to run into these issues and it seems as if dealing successfully with these issues is an important part of crossing the chasm without jumping the shark.

A company that doesn’t deal with this well, by coming up with lame excuses like “We’re just a communications utility” while ignoring the community of their stakeholders is likely to run into difficulties. These difficulties may or may not be legal issues.

Most terms of service are written with conditional clauses about how the company “may deal with harassment issues on a case by case basis”, or something like that, allowing them wiggle room if they do not act. Yet the actions by State Attorney Generals against large social sites about deception provides an interesting legal avenue. Even the conditional clauses may set up an expectation of safety that may not truly be there. In addition, a company that does not adequately address Hate Speech and Oppression in Cyberspace runs into the difficulties of essentially saying, “We are a cyberharassment friendly zone”. That is not a message that companies concerned about their stakeholders wants to get out.

In severe cases, there may also be commerce issues. A standard argument is that these sites are run by private companies that can treat their users however they please. Yet, in physical space, a company that refuses to allow in or properly serve customers because of race or gender many face legal action on discrimination. The argument that companies can act however they want falls flat.

The session discussed the idea of taking takedown notices from the DMCA, adding a little bit of due process, and applying it to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. To maintain Section 230 immunity, a company would need to show that it is adequately, and with due process, responding to takedown requests of hate speech and oppression in cyberspace. Another idea was to apply the idea of restraining orders to cyberspace and perhaps adding something like that to a modified Section 230.

The final plenary session of Computers, Freedom and Privacy was presented by Clay Shirky. His book, Here Comes Everybody may also provide insights into how companies can cross the chasm without jumping the shark. I was tempted to title this post, “Look Out, Twitter, Here Comes Everybody.” He touched on Twitter, noting that "The front page of Twitter is a monument to the inane,” and yet he went on to illustrate how Twitter has proven to be a very powerful and important organizing tool.

Many folks on Twitter have recently been bringing up earlier works of Shirky, including a reference to Bion and Shirky’s corollary to Godwin’s law. I must admit that the description of Bion that Shirky gave in 2003 didn’t really fit with my experiences with Bion’s thinking through the Group Relations community and it was fascinating to get such a different perspective.

Godwin’s law states "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." I can’t find the reference to Shirky’s corollary, but essentially it is that as any group grows, so will the calls for moderation.

Shirky presented an interesting four quadranted Gartnarian representation of how to treat people differently based on the level of engagement with a social site. He noted that the wrong level of moderation makes you inert.

Shirky talked about how a small, short term social sites need neither moderation nor a reputation management system. Small social sites that exist for a long time benefit from reputation management systems. Large sites that exist for a short time benefit from moderation and large sites that exist for a long time benefit from both.

This brings us back to the issue of crossing the chasm without jumping the shark. A social site starts off as a small short term site. To attract the innovators and early adopters, it probably needs to avoid moderation and reputation systems. Yet as the site exists for a longer time, crossing the chasm, drawing in the early majority, it moves from being a site that is best with no moderation or reputation system to a site that is best with both. Failing to add these tools may prevent the early majority from entering in. Adding these tools may push away the innovators and early adopters that keep the site vibrant and compelling.

It is a difficult line to walk, which perhaps brings me back to “the human side of strategic leadership”, to borrow a phrase from CenterNorth.

When it comes to online social sites, I am normally an innovator or early adopter. I’m a big fan of Twitter, and I hope that they can find a way to successfully cross the chasm without jumping the shark. Hopefully these thoughts will be helpful. Yet if they can’t pull it off, someone else will. Microblogging is to compelling to die because the leader can’t manage change.