Here's the gist of the presentation I gave last week entitled "A Whirlwind Tour of Social Networking" in London at the Online Information 2006 conference hosted by the congenial David Gurteen.
Social
Networking Applications (SNAs) are tools and technologies that make it
easier to identify, meet, connect, share information and collaborate
with other, appropriate people. They can help you discover (or
rediscover) and locate the right people, just in time, build "know-who"
maps and directories of expertise, invite and permission people to join
networks, connect (real-time synchronously or asynchronously) with
various people using various appropriate communication media, manage relationships across those media, and collaborate and share content with people in your networks.
Much
of the current emphasis in new SNA development is in precisely those
areas (finding people, virtual presence and co-development) where the
first generation of applications was most disappointing, and there are
some promising signs.
The greatest challenge has been making the
tools simple and intuitive enough that they become ubiquitous, like the
telephone and e-mail, instead of used only by those on the right side
of the digital divide (tools like Skype, forums and blogs) or by an
even smaller number of power users (tools like wikis and the more
sophisticated co-authoring and collaboration tools). Unfamiliarity,
social awkwardness, complexity (to the point some of them require
extensive training), our ineffective interpersonal tools (some of us
don't know how to introduce ourselves well in person, let alone
virtually), and the fact that those we want to connect with often
aren't online (and in some cases aren't even known) all mitigate
against widespread use of these tools.
These principles, which apply to all social interactions, dictate our ability to establish relationships effectively online:
- Mutual trust, respect, context, and honest, transparent self-disclosure are all prerequisites to good relationships.
- Relationships require a conversational icebreaker: you can't just launch into them.
- First impressions matter (many potentially important relationships were ruined by missteps right off the bat).
- Information
conveyed by observation (body language, tone of voice) counts more than
that conveyed by our words: we are judged by what we do, not what we
say.
- Collaboration is the miracle glue of relationships: people
who have worked together on something that engages them forge powerful
relationships of trust and respect.
- Every interaction online
carries with it the burden of the entire network: "I appreciate what
you're talking about, but how am I going to explain this and work it
out with A, B and C", and "I'm not going to confide that to anyone I
haven't met face to face". Openness has its downside.
Ultimately,
social networks are complex, adaptive systems. Tools that are 'merely
complicated' cannot hope to accommodate them, so sometimes the best
that can be hoped is that the tool will be 'invisible' and not impede
relationship-building and collaboration.
Here's a list of types
of SNAs, organized by 'taskonomy' (what they're used for); the Examples
given are free except as noted otherwise:
| People-Connector Tools | Examples | Useful for Identifying & Finding This Kind of People | What You Can Do Now | | People-Finders | LinkedIn, Ryze, Orkut, Facebook1 | People meeting selected search criteria or having a specified affinity with you | Set up a just-in-time canvassing system2 | | Social Network Mappers | InFlow | People connected with others in an organization | Read The Hidden Power of Social Networks3 | | Proximity Locaters | DodgeBall | People you want to meet who are physically in your proximity | Use them to enable serendipitous meetings within your company4 | | Affinity Detectors | NTag (not free) | People with whom you have shared interests who are physically in your proximity | Use them at conferences where most attendees don't know each other5 | | Social Publishing & Info-Sharing Tools | Examples | Useful for Publishing & Finding This Kind of Information | What You Can Do Now | | Journals | Blogs, Podcasts | Context-rich stories, reviews, and personal articles | Pilot blogs among those in the company already maintaining some sort of 'journal'6 | | Social Bookmarkers | Del.icio.us | Links to others' stories, reviews and articles (for those who don't have the time or interest to write their own blog) | Use del.icio.us to get standing notification of new articles on subjects of interest to your organization | | Photo Journals | Flickr | Personal photos and visualizations | - | | Memediggers | Digg, Reddit | Links to stories on 'hot' topics | - | | Product Evaluators | Wize, ThisNext, Insider Pages | Consumers' evaluations of commercial products and services | Check out what potential customers are saying about the competition | | Personal Diaries/ Music/ Video Sharers | MySpace | Information about and samples of people's favourite stuff | Put samples of your organization's possible new products on MySpace to test-market them | | Collaboration and Communication Tools | Examples | Useful for This Kind of Collaboration and Communication | What You Can Do Now | | Wikis | JotSpot | Simple, quick collaboration on document drafting and idea generation | Use wikis for small-group, ad hoc collaboration in your organization | | Forums | Yahoo Groups | Threaded, subscribable conversations among communities of practice and communities of interest | Use forums for communication among ad hoc communities whose members are both inside and outside your organization | | Commercial Collaboration Tools | BaseCamp
(not free) | Project management including document sharing, discussions, scheduling, resource allocation, notifications | - | | Mindmaps | Freemind | Real-time consensus-building in meetings and conferences; Visual representation of complicated information | Use mindmaps projected on a screen during meetings and conferences for instant documentation and resolution of misunderstandings | | VoIP | Skype | Simple audio and video conferencing | Use Skype to enable free long-distance conferences when face-to-face is too expensive or impractical | | Virtual Presence | Vyew | Real-time videoconferencing with screen-sharing, instant messaging, document sharing, whiteboarding, and attendance tracking | Use Vyew to enable small-group videoconferencing, virtual meetings, and training when face-to-face is too expensive or impractical | | Peer Production | - | Producer-customer co-development of products and solutions (gift economy) | Read Umair Haque's paper and decide whether this technique has a place in your organization | | 'Unconferencing' | Open Space | Collaboratively addressing and resolving complex issues | Read Chris Corrigan's Open Space site and decide whether this technique has a place in your organization | | Combinations of SNAs and Hardware | Mashups7 |
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Notes:
- Facebook finds people within a specific school or organization.
- Don't
expect corporate directories to be current or give you the information
you need to find true expertise. Instead, set up a just-in-time
canvassing system, connected to e-mail groups around identified
communities of practice in your organization, with request templates,
to quickly find the people in your organization who have the expertise
you need.
- If you're going to map your organization's networks, use Rob's book to map the value
of the networks, not just the volume of connections. Use it to support
your just-in-time canvassing system (see above) and your communities of
practice.
- These tools avoid the embarrassment
of rejection (and stalking) by notifying the person you are seeking to
meet (rather than you) when the two of you independently indicate you are in close
physical proximity; only when the other person responds positively to
this notification are you notified that that person is willing and able
to meet with you. This type of software has enormous potential to
enable valuable meetings of people that would otherwise not occur.
- These
tools allow each tag recipient to key into the tag's 'smart' mag stripe
information on their interests and expertise; when two people with
shared interests and expertise come into close physical proximity,
their tags 'flash' those shared interests and expertise to 'break the
ice' quickly.
- SMEs, CoP coordinators and
internal newsletter editors are often ideal pilot groups for blogs,
since they already have content that lends itself to journal format. Process:
Identify the pilot group, select a blogging tool, develop and
pre-populate a starting taxonomy, table of contents and initial content
archive for each pilot member, develop appropriate security, RSS and
internal/external access permissioning protocols, set up a
help/monitoring group, offer everyone in the organization a brief
seminar on blog publishing and subscribing, and talk up the
externally-permissioned blogs outside the organization.
- Examples:
Health departments are using collaboration tools combined with Google
Maps to map disease outbreaks; Caregivers are using wireless VoIP with
GPS and digital monitors to allow seniors with medical conditions to
live in their own homes and have their health monitored continuously
and unobtrusively.
The keys to success in 'selling' SNAs in skeptical organizations, and ensuring they are used effectively, are:
- Enable executives to understand how they could be used, and encourage
them to provide reaources for their acquisition, by developing a future state
vision story that relates how your organization could accomplish things
with SNAs that would be impossible without them, and improve
productivity in the process.
- When the tools are introduced,
make them simple and encourage the pilot groups to self-manage their
use and to develop simple 'user guides' that can be used when they are
scaled up; this will minimize support and training costs, which in most
organizations vastly exceed the cost of the software.
- Run lots
of small-scale SNA pilots/experiments in parallel, starting with people
who either know and like the tools already, or have an urgent need for
what they can offer; learn from both successes and failures and build
on the successes.
- Get the pilot teams to tell the executives
their personal success stories that come from using SNAs -- nothing
gets interest and additional resources more than a delighted 'customer'.
Discussion Questions:
- What kind of success have you had getting SNAs introduced in your organization?
- What's
missing from the SNA 'landscape': Are there other kinds of SNA tools or
mashups that might help with people-connection, social publishing and
P2P information-sharing, or collaboration?
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
