A recent study conducted by Deloitte on more than 100 businesses with online communities reported by Josh Catone deals why these platforms often fail or don’t meet the expectations:

• “Businesses are being enticed by fancy technology. Mesmerized by bells and whistles, many business are foolishly blowing their entire budgets on technology
• Lack of proper management. The Deloitte study found that 30% of online communities have just part-time employees in charge, and most have just a single PR person running the show. (…) Managed communities are a lot less likely to grow organically the way general mainstream social networks do, so you need someone who knows how to build one in charge.
• The wrong measurement metrics. Moran noticed that most businesses are measuring the success of their communities in the wrong way. Though their stated goals are usually to create viral, word-of-mouth marketing and increase brand loyalty, the metric they use to gauge success is unique visitors. If all you’re after is growing visits to the site, then you’re missing the point. You’re not trying to compete with mainstream social networks, so you don’t need to chase eyeballs. Rather you need to build interaction and create a level of comfort”

Why do I blog this? not really a surprise IMO but since I am documenting failures for a project, I add this to my list of common problems. There would also be a lot to draw about the over-expectations that concerns 3D.

I sometimes use the Metcalfe Law in my work to describe how communication systems (mobile phones application, location-based services, etc.) have a value only if there is a critical mass of users. Being the only local boob with a fax machine does not allow you to go beyond showing off, it’s actually like having one shoe. First formulated by Robert Metcalfe wrt to Ethernet, Metcalfe’s law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system(N2).

It’s then interesting to dig that stuff and see why very serious folks in IEEE Spectrum are pondering that argument. They actually critique how this “law” has been turned into a mantra during the Internet Boom (and now with the Web2.0 frenziness) and mostly focus on the correctness of its definition that sits in between linear and exponential growth:

“If Metcalfe’s mathematics were right, how can the law be wrong? Metcalfe was correct that the value of a network grows faster than its size in linear terms; the question is, how much faster? If there are n members on a network, Metcalfe said the value grows quadratically as the number of members grows.

We propose, instead, that the value of a network of size n grows in proportion to n log(n).“

(Taken from here)

But more importantly:

“The fundamental flaw underlying both Metcalfe’s and Reed’s laws is in the assignment of equal value to all connections or all groups. (…) In general, connections are not all used with the same intensity. In fact, in large networks, such as the Internet, with millions and millions of potential connections between individuals, most are not used at all. So assigning equal value to all of them is not justified“

Why do I blog this? it’s interesting to understand how such law can be criticized. I actually do think the cluster metaphor is still valid but one should be cautious about how to employ it (and take the limits they describe into account). Should there be a commonsensical use of that law and a more mathematical one (the latter…. to make quantitative forecast… which I am not into)?

In The social representation of telecommunications, Leopoldina Fortunati and Anna Maria Manganelli explore “common knowledge of telecommunications”. In a sense, they try to reconstruct how technologies of information and communication “have been metabolised in the system of social thought, and the way in which they have been integrated conceptually.

Using Moscovici’s frame of reference (social representations), they analyze data gathered from telephone survey carried out in 1996. Interviewees were asked to freely associate two terms with certain cue words: ‘telecommunications’, ‘fax’, ‘television’, ‘telephone’, ‘computer’, ‘mobile phone’, ‘radio’, ‘video-recorder’, ‘stereo’ and ‘newspapers’. Cluster analysis allowed them to represent the similarities between the communicative technologies (represented by the cue-words) through a dendrogram of similarities:

The authors conclude that:

“In conclusion, the analysis of the similarity between means of communication shows that in 1996 there already existed a scission between the real telecommunication technologies, that is, ‘fax, telephone, mobile phone and computer’, and technologies which were not telecommunication, such as mass media or means of reproduction of sounds and images. The first were based on technologies that carried circular communication, the second on uni-directional communication technologies. Furthermore, in the first cluster (not telecommunication), we must note the clear distinction between technologies that reproduce sounds and images and those that carry information. The position of the ‘radio’, assimilated as it was to ‘stereo’, was yet a further indication that this medium was experienced essentially as music.

From this first analysis what emerged is that the profiles of the different forms of telecommunication and the division and cooperation among them were reflected with clarity and precision in common knowledge.“

Why do I blog this? I was looking for reference about representation of technologies an ran across this paper; found the methodology quite intriguing (there are lots of other results to check). What I found pertinent is the idea of having a a detailed description of the cognitive integration of the various means of communication. How would that be perceived now? with new forms of communication? with so-called “digital natives”?

Fortunati, L. & Manganelli, A.M. (2007).The social representation of telecommunications. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, pp. 1617-4909.

In “Social Practices in Location-Based Collecting“, O’Hara et al. describes an alternative approach for location-based technologies “by focussing on the collecting and keeping of location-based content as opposed to simply the in situ consumption of content”. Their point is that collecting and keeping can have important social values over and above simply consuming the content in situ.

They present here a user study of a “location-based visitor application at London Zoo where content triggers at particular animal exhibits allowed people to gather and consume location-relevant content on mobile phones“. Let me go directly to the results obtained through qualitative analysis:

“Through the fieldwork in this paper what we have demonstrated is that over and above the instrumental value of location-based content, where the right information is provided at the right place/time, there are additional non-instrumental aspects ofthese location-based experiences from which value is derived. These have to do with the social motivations bound up in the collecting and keeping of content. This is more than simply the automatic logging of content accessed that you would get from the likes of the History section in a web browser. It was about the active construction of a meaningful set of the location-based content which made the act of collecting an end itself.
(…)
the role of the collection of location-based content in identity work; in developing a sense of challenge and achievement; in defining a sense of group camaraderie; and in creating a playful sense of competition among group members. Further, we see how narratives told around the collected location-based content over time imbue it with additional value. These narratives become part of the resources through which relationship with family and friends get actively constructed.“

Why do I blog his? after the previous blogpost in which I complain about the fact that LBS usage have trouble going beyond past examples, this paper is quite refreshing in documenting how the collecting of content (tied to a specific location) have an important social value. It definitely shows the importance of location-based content, beyond the delivery model (and shows also the importance of time, a sort of asynchronous value)

O’Hara, Kenton, Kindberg, Tim, Glancy, Maxine, Baptista, Luciana, Sukumaran, Byju, Kahana, Gil and Rowbotham, Julie (2007): Social practices in location-based collecting. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2007 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2007. pp. 1225-1234.

Reading “Get There Early: Sensing the Future to Compete in the Present” by Bob Johansen, I find intriguing the connection between the following excerpt and some stuff I read the other day in “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” by Cory Doctorow. It’s mostly about the future of “networking knowledge”.

First, the excerpt by Johansen:

“Networking knowledge will become important to success, for individuals and for organizations. A cohort of people with traditional networking skills and new media practices is defining a new index of networking intelligence - a networking IQ - that sets them apart from others. Networking IQ is basically the combination of traditional networking skills with the application of new media and technologies. IFTF research has identified the following six factors as being most important to networking IQ: group participation (how you use the network in effective ways to engage with others), referral behavior (how you use networks to link to other resources available through the network), online lifestyle (how the network fits into the context of the rest of your life), personal mobile computing (how you use the network as you move about), locative activity (how you use the network to draw links to specific geographic locations), computer connectivity (your skills in linking to computer-based resources).”

Would the networking IQ also take the Whuffie system described by Cory Doctorow?

“I pinged his Whuffie a few times, and noticed that it was climbing steadily upward as he accumulated more esteem from the people he met. (…) I’d get him to concede that Whuffie recaptured the true essence of money: in the old days, if you were broke but respected, you wouldn’t starve; contrariwise, if you were rich and hated, no sum could buy you security and peace. By measuring the thing that money really represented — your personal capital with your friends and neighbors — you more accurately gauged your success.
(…)
He had a lot of left-handed Whuffie; respect garnered from people who shared very few of my opinions. I expected that. What I didn’t expect was that his weighted whuffie score, the one that lent extra credence to the rankings of people I respected was also high“

Why do I blog this? I don’t really work on that topic but find it intriguing. People interested in that should have a look at bitchun.org, a marketplace for trading and rewarding favors for your friends and like-minded strangers.