Social Networks
Entries related to social networks, group psychology, anthropology, and really any of the social sciences.
Think Different In #rochmn for #mayoragan
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 10/16/2011 - 20:24Exhausted, I sit in my room in the Grand Kahler in Rochester, MN and try to write. I am here for the Third Annual Health Care Social Media Summit at the Mayo Clinic.
The day started with a drive up to Bradley International Airport in Hartford. On the way, I listened to NPR stories about birding and "The Big Year". I listened to a story about a supernova and about Steve Reich. All of this came back to a theme, Think Different.
Not only, think different, but also perceive differently. See rare birds and supernovas. Listen to music that is structured differently from what you've been trained to hear. On the plane I read Michel Foucault's The Archaeology of Knowledge. It pushed my thinking even deeper. What is the relationship between "Think Different" and "Occupy Wall Street"? There is a lot that I could write about that, and hopefully, I will find the time and energy to do so soon.
There was turbulence taking off out of Hartford, and landing in Minneapolis/Saint Paul. Yet the final leg of the trip was smooth.
At the airport, I checked in on Foursquare and found there was another person heading to the conference. We ran into each other at baggage claim and shared a cab into the city.
After unpacking and settling in a little, my boss and I went over to "Chester's", which is really a fantastic restaurant. After dinner, we wondered through the local Barnes and Noble. Neal Stephenson has a new book out, which placed my mind into a science fiction framework.
As I walked back to the hotel, I saw an elderly couple walking in the failing evening light, with the aid of one another and a walker. By boss had commented about how he wondered what this town would be without the Mayo clinic here. I looked at the art in the Peace Plaza. I followed a walkway with colored lights shining up from the ground, and I thought to myself, this is science fiction. It is a scene right out of William Gibson, where people confronted by some great difficulty, come to try and extend their lives, in an artsy peaceful plaza.
Tomorrow, the discussions begin in earnest about social media and health care. Hopefully, Steve Reich, supernovas, rare birds and art will all echo in a mind mixed with Foucault and Stephenson and will help me think different.
Five Years on Twitter
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 10/15/2011 - 20:08Sometime right about now is my fifth anniversary on Twitter. One site I looked at reported that today, October 15th is my fifth anniversary, but another site placed my first tweet on the 16th. Some of it may be time zones, or it might be that I set up my account on the 15th and tweeted for the first time on the 16th. I’m not sure exactly.
However, over these past five years, I’ve sent out almost 11,000 tweets. Some are cross posted from other sites, like links to my blog posts via Twitterfeed, or tweets coming from Foursquare or other sites. Others come in bursts when I attend conferences. We’ll see how much tweeting I do this week at the Third Annual Health Care Social Media conference at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota that I’m leaving for on Sunday morning.
While social media has grown in popularity and Twitter is very significant, it still isn’t as pervasive as other sites. Over the years, various groups have dismissed Twitter. I remember going to marketing conferences years ago where people said that nothing would ever come of Twitter. I’ve been to conferences on the future of journalism where people have wondered if Twitter matters. In answer to this latter group, my wife got me a shirt that says, “I get my news on Twitter”. Often, that has been the case, as I get breaking news on Twitter first. Now, more and more news organizations post their headlines on Twitter.
This evening, I watched the Twitter feed for news about the occupy movement. That’s another topic that needs more than 140 character and I hope to write more about it soon. Yet now, I’m very tired and I should rest for the big trip tomorrow.
Representative Consensus in a Digital Age
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 10/09/2011 - 13:02A key characteristic of the #Occupy movement is the use of consensus for decision making. Some people have worked with groups governed by consensus for decades. For others, it is a new idea. For everyone, there is a new component, digital communications.
I have been peripherally involved with the Occupy Hartford group, and have watched people learn about and use the consensus process. However, because of other commitments, I have not been able to make it to the general assemblies which means in a traditional consensus process where consensus is arrived at between the people attending the meeting, my opportunities to have my voice heard have been limited.
This is by no means a new phenomenon. Our country has been based on a representative democratic form of government. I cannot go to Washington to debate every issue that Congress confronts. Instead, I have representatives. In my case, Rosa DeLauro represents me in the House and Richard Blumenthal and Joe Lieberman represent me in the Senate. I’m not always happy with the representation I receive, so I send my thoughts to my representatives and get involved in the process of trying to elect people that are more likely to represent my view points.
With Occupy Hartford, we are not electing people to take part in the consensus process. Instead, anyone who attends may participate. This is where the digital age can come in nicely.
Some of the people that represent the citizens of Connecticut in the Connecticut General Assembly, also known as the State Legislature, do a very good job of communicating via digital media while they are at the Capitol. With that, there is a great opportunity for them to hear from the people they are representing and making sure that a wide range of people are truly represented at the Connecticut General Assembly.
It is easy to find out who is at the Connecticut General Assembly. However, it can be hard to find out who is at the general assembly of Occupy Hartford and this can make it harder for the people attending to fully represent the broad base of supporters of the occupy movement in Connecticut.
Digital media can help with this. To the extent that people attending the general assembly share on social media that they are there, they can represent more people. To the extent that they share what is going on at the general assembly, real time, via social media, they can get more input.
In many ways, this is similar to a technique often used at general assemblies, called the people’s mic, where people repeat what they’ve heard through the crowd, so more people can hear it. Instead of simply repeating what is said at the general assembly to the crowd, repeating it via social media, the people’s mic becomes digitally enabled. Social media can also then become a way of getting additional feedback to the people who will be making decisions at the general assembly.
Beyond this, it is possible to discuss many of the issues that are likely to be faced at a general assembly ahead of time online. Then, attendees of the general assembly can be better versed in the issues when they are discussed at a general assembly.
It is exciting to see the occupy movement using consensus as well as to think about how digital media can help make consensus more powerful.
What do you think?
Online Anniversaries
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 09/26/2011 - 19:17Last Thursday, September 22nd, I received a message from Foursquare letting me know that it was my second anniversary on their site. It was while I was at the Digiday conference on Social Media and that seemed somehow appropriate.
Last year, PodcampCT took place on the 4th anniversary of me being on Twitter, October 16th. This year, I will be in Rochester, MN on the day before a conference on Social Media and Healthcare starts on the 16th.
On Facebook, I installed Timeline last week, only to be told that today, September 26th, is my fifth anniversary on their site. Friends have expressed surprise that I've only been on Facebook for five years, but I point out that it was about five years ago that they finally opened up Facebook to people with email addresses other than at schools.
With all of this, I started looking around for other online firsts for myself that I could find. The earliest I could find was a Usenet post I put up on July 11, 1982. According to Lambda, I joined their MOO on 12/30/1994. On Jan 23, 2002, I joined Ecademy and the earliest blog post I can find there is from 8/21/2002.
Also 2002 is the earliest post I have on Livejournal, dating March 13, 2002. It was based on a discussion I had had on a different MOO.
Over on the political blogs, the earliest post I find on DailyKos was November 10, 2003. This is followed by a post on Greater Democracy on December 10, 2003. I suspect there are a bunch of other posts from that era that I can't find, which is partly prompted me to create Orient Lodge in 2004 as a repository for some of my writing.
There are plenty of other online anniversaries, but at least right now, these are probably the most significant.
Someone Moved My Bright Shiny New Cheese
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 09/25/2011 - 12:57It seems like whenever a change comes along to some established technology, there are two predominant reactions that you hear almost immediately. Fans of the technology start screaming, “Ooh, Bright Shiny” as they explore the wonderful new features, while detractors start grumbling about someone moving their cheese. Usually, both camps have something valid to say, but then a new group comes along and complains about the people oohing or grumbling. Lost in all of this are underlying, and perhaps more important issues to be explored.
The latest changes to Facebook seem to fit nicely into this. Some people like the new newsfeed and timeline. Others are grumbling. Now that I’ve played with both the new newsfeed and the new timeline, let me share a few thoughts about the underlying issues what I think are two important underlying issues, engagement and privacy.
In social media marketing, engagement one of those rarely quantified goals that many people chase and few define. I won’t join with the ranks of those who denigrate engagement because of a lack of clear definitions or metrics. Perhaps engagement is like quality, beauty or other ideas that are important and hard to measure, or to borrow an old quote, like pornography; we can’t define it, but we know it when we see it.
Just because we can’t define it, or have a clear quantification, we can compare things relatively. Does the changes in Facebook make more engaging or less engaging? Do the changes make it easier or harder for people using Facebook to engage with their friends and followers?
To the extent that the changes are bright and shiny, that is likely to improve engagement. To the extent that they are moving cheese, they are likely to decrease engagement. That is, of course, until the new changes lose their shine and everyone gets used to the new location of the cheese. Then, we can look at the real impact.
In terms of the newsfeed, I don’t really see it as a big change. It continues to reflect Facebook’s attempt to find what you’re interested in. For people with wide ranging and varied interests, this is likely to be a bad thing. I don’t believe Facebook is going to help these people, and more likely will disappoint them. To borrow from Eli Pariser, Facebook is introducing a new and enhanced Filter Bubble. (See his TED Talk which touches on this.) For others, if it may build engagement, but it may mean that people trying to reach them will end up preaching to the choir.
The timeline is a bit different. Facebook has done a few things right here. They’ve opened it up to developers, and just as the Internet makes it possible for just about anyone to set up a blog and claim they’re a journalist, it also makes it easier for people to claim to be developers and get free previews. I actually set up a developer account a long time to explore linking Facebook and Drupal, so it was very easy for me to start using the new timeline. To the extent that this encourages others to dabble a little more with online development, this is a good thing.
The timeline is a considerable improvement over the old profile pages. As such, it is likely to improve engagement in many ways. Yet others have commented, and I concur, that it looks a bit more like MySpace now, which is noteworthy in a few ways. From a futurist viewpoint, should we be asking if Facebook is the new MySpace? MySpace was flying high once, but not anymore. Will Facebook meet a similar fate?
More importantly, when people think about stalking online, they very often think about MySpace. Now I believe that a lot of the fears about cyberstalking have been overblown, or perhaps more significantly, misdirected. It isn’t the unknown pedophile that is the biggest threat, it is our frenemies, and I suspect that Timeline will encourage inappropriate frenemy behavior.
It may be that Facebook will make it easier to filter out inaccurate information, or other information that you want filtered out. It already has that ability, and is asking me to confirm places where I have not worked, have not gone to college and who are not in fact relatives of mine.
Yet there is other information that it is putting up that I wish that it wouldn’t and I can’t find a nice way to prevent, such as detailed information about distant relatives, and details about various work experiences that are not appropriate. Facebook need to clean this up.
More importantly, there are concerns about other aspects of privacy raised by Dave Winer and others.
Bright Shiny? Moved Cheese? Enhanced Filter Bubble? Privacy Threat? All of this, and more probably applies to Facebook’s latest changes and more. It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out. What’s your take?
