Social objects (Jyri Engeström)

He was presenting on the following subjet: “Why Some Social Softwares Work and Others Fail: The Case for Object-Centered Sociality”.
Personal note: Nico tu devrais checker ce guss il est vraiment bon.
This guy (his blog is here) did some serious ass kicking in his presentation. That’s what I love in these scandinavian speakers (Christian is the other example): they make some really super charged presentations on a quiet, calm, and low profile tone. You get out of the room and you wonder: “is it really this young boys-band-leader faced guy dressed as a sk8er who just made the most disturbing points I have heard in a while?”. Weird, but I prefer that over the sometimes empty yet really energetically presented shows you get from north america (and it’s my time at Arthur Andersen speaking here, not impressions on anyone at reboot).

Now on to the facts:

  • Jyri said that some early social softwares failed in the past. He gave two examples:

    • firefly -> bought by MS and apparently terminated
    • sixdegrees -> went out of business

    We now live in a world with 10-15 majors social software applications: friendster, flickR, Meetup, tribe, Plazes, Livejournal, Linked In, Meetro, etc…

  • A social network is a map of relationship between people. But people do not connect for the sake of connecting. They connect because they share some objects. Objects can be a date, a location, a job, an activity, a passion, etc… In fact, real world society centers around these objects. When objects disappear, the network usually follows. How many friends do you still know from your high-school days? Not too many probably because you lost your common ground (nights out, classes, sport, etc…)

  • Humans have of tendency to turn objects into games and challenges.

  • Social Software should not only offer the possibility to socialize, but also offer objects for people to work with. If there is no object people will at first have a tendency to turn networking into the object, then will get bored. He gave the example of linked in: first you get excited because you create this artificial goal of adding as many people as you can. Then you get sick of it because it’s basically useless, and you close your account.
    Conclusion: the sociality part of sociality does not interest people.

  • Good objects add value. They also allow:
    – tagging
    – crafting
    – tuning
    – hacking

  • Blog posts are a great example of social networking objects.

  • Finaly, Jyri gave a recap of the current objects used to create social networks:
    – Books (amazon)
    – discussions (blogs)
    – bookmarks (del.icio.us)
    – photos (flickr)
    – music (last.fm)
    – movies (netflix)
    – events (upcoming.org)

    We should see social networks develop in these domains: – places (plazes, dodgeball, meetro)
    – products

    Overall one of the best presentation of reboot. Really nice guy I chatted with a bit afterward. He appreciated the praises on his presenting style and acknowledge feeling sometimes a bit bad about being so low key. When he’s taking the stage after 3 american presenters he feels people can’t even hear him ;-)
    If you run a conference that is somehow related to the Internet it’s probably the guy you want to have on the speakers roster.

    This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 14th, 2005 at 11:23 am and is filed under reboot. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

    • 8 Responses to “Social objects (Jyri Engeström)”

    1. Chninkel Says:
      June 14th, 2005 at 3:16 pm

      Funny he didn’t even mention StumbleUpon. The one “community” type service I use on a daily basis. I’d like to have his take on this one… Too bad. maybe I will try del.icio.us then. ;)
      Btw, thanks for the coverage lau. It looks coming back to bohelz after 5 days away but definitely some interesting material there !

    2. Chninkel Says:
      June 14th, 2005 at 3:16 pm

      Funny he didn’t even mention StumbleUpon. The one “community” type service I use on a daily basis. I’d like to have his take on this one… Too bad. maybe I will try del.icio.us then. ;)
      Btw, thanks for the coverage lau. It looks coming back to bohelz after 5 days away but definitely some interesting material there !

    3. Jyri Engeström Says:
      June 17th, 2005 at 12:55 pm

      Hi Laurent, thanks for the kind comments about my talk and special thanks for putting up all the Reboot summaries! Re: Chninkel’s comment: I wasn’t aware of StumbleUpon until you brought it to my attention, cheers for that. It’s great to have the thumbs up/thumbs down buttons in the Firefox toolbar. But why why the pre-set categories? Fexible data structures (tagging) is the key enabler through which bookmarks (just like photos, places, etc.) become generative social objects.

    4. Jyri Engeström Says:
      June 17th, 2005 at 12:55 pm

      Hi Laurent, thanks for the kind comments about my talk and special thanks for putting up all the Reboot summaries! Re: Chninkel’s comment: I wasn’t aware of StumbleUpon until you brought it to my attention, cheers for that. It’s great to have the thumbs up/thumbs down buttons in the Firefox toolbar. But why why the pre-set categories? Fexible data structures (tagging) is the key enabler through which bookmarks (just like photos, places, etc.) become generative social objects.

    5. Benoit Says:
      July 21st, 2005 at 11:34 pm

      I found about Jyri Engeström theory a few days ago and I really think he’s totally right ! Your summary clearly present his theory.

    6. Benoit Says:
      July 21st, 2005 at 11:34 pm

      I found about Jyri Engeström theory a few days ago and I really think he’s totally right ! Your summary clearly present his theory.

    7. Laurent Says:
      July 31st, 2005 at 4:24 pm

      Thx for the praises :-)
      Happy to meet another blogger going for the french AND english on his site (Benoit is also publishing in both languages on his site)

    8. Laurent Says:
      July 31st, 2005 at 4:24 pm

      Thx for the praises :-)
      Happy to meet another blogger going for the french AND english on his site (Benoit is also publishing in both languages on his site)

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