social networks

I send a lot of emails. I post a lot of messages on my blog or on Facebook.

One thing I have noticed over the years: there is an invisible rule that seems to reign on the online world, regardless of the medium: the more care you put in a message, the more chance there is it generates an answer (email) or interaction (social networks).

Take email. When you send a newsletter, if you get 50% of people opening your message (as we do at Lift) you can be pretty satisfied. The industry standard is more around 20%. That is what you get for sending messages that have not been specifically written for the recipient. They feel that, and have no pressure to answer whatsoever as it has been sent to thousands of people.

In a typical one to one communication, answer rate is probably closer to 95% as long as you write to people you know, and who are at the same “level” than you.

Now for my editorial job at Lift, I get to invite pretty busy people as we try to convince them to join us for the conference. We don’t always succeed in having them, but at least I get around 80% of answers to my messages, positive or negative. I get this answering rate by carefully crafting my messages to make the recipient feel I value him or her, as I invest a lot of my time in reaching out. If I send a quick message, it is likely I will not get an answer. If I take time to research the person I am contacting, find out what their recent projects are, add a few personal sentences about the city they live in, the chances for a response get much higher.

My point here is that it seems that electronic communication is not totally deprived of context. When you talk to someone, your body language gives hints of how you feel, and influences the answers you get. In electronic form, these implicit messages can also be conveyed. I care about the discussion we’re having, I’m willing to invest time in reaching out to you. That matters.

I noticed the same happens on my blog and on Facebook. On the blog, articles where I simply pass a link (as I often do to set them aside for my personal archive) receive little feedback, while longer and more personal articles generate more comments. On Facebook, I have an even more tangible proof. For a long time, the Lift page was managed manually. I would replicate each article carefully, adding a custom message different from the title of the news I was pushing to the community. As soon as we installed an automatic app (RSS graffiti) to republish articles automatically, the number of interactions almost halved. It was the same content, but our followers felt we were not putting as much energy in the process of pushing the information to them. They felt less engaged, maybe less cared for, and the number of interactions dropped.

That’s why social technologies will never be magical. They promise us more personalized interactions with followers, as we know who they are. Truth is, mass updates will always have a different feeling from a message written specifically for a recipient. Nobody can escape the time consuming task of writing personal messages. And if you have 10′000 fans, that will take a while.

Brian Solis is the author of the acclaimed new book on social media and business, Engage!, He is Principal of FutureWorks, an award-winning New Media marketing and branding agency in Silicon Valley and the Chief Web Analyst at PeopleBrowsr. Solis is globally recognized as one of the most prominent thought leaders and published authors in new media. A digital analyst, sociologist, and futurist, Solis has influenced the effects of emerging media on the convergence of marketing, communications, and publishing.

At Lift11, Brian will discuss the notion of social currency, how the activity we have on social networks helps build an important asset: social capital.

Brian Solis

Futurist
FutureWorks (US)
» View Lift11 speakers

Laurent Haug: In what context is social currency emerging?

Brian Solis: We, including the earliest of adopters, the greatest of innovators, all have missed a vision that's playing out as we speak... what we do and say in social networks equates to "social capital" and that one day it would be used for and against us. The time has come to be mindful of the value we create in networks such as Facebook, Twitter, for ourselves. What we share, what we say, the smallest of actions from "likes" to Retweets to the simplest of updates form a digital representation of what we are. This persona can be leveraged when used effectively.

Is that the main reason behind users involvement in social networks?

No, of course not. Right now, the social web is a vibrant "egosystem". When we were introduced to blogs, Facebook or Twitter, as humans we were excited at simply having an audience for our words and our experiences. With every reactions and friend requests, we were rewarded to share more of ourselves. Now we realize something new: that what someone says can represent varying levels of value, whether it is an opinion or expertise. Who you are connected to is also important. We are judged by the company we keep. When combined, actions and relationships create a foundation for social capital.

With the emerging array of search and analysis tools, simple processes of data mining encourages advanced profiling that we, as users, are not, but should be, aware of.

For example, banks are looking at an individual's social graph to determine their credit risk. In the blink of an eye, what could be considered trivial information becomes an influential element that will contribute to changing the direction your life will take. I believe we should make users more aware of this unfolding reality. This is about consciousness. How they engage online and who they connect with serves as social currency in every transaction.

Can you define social currency?

Social currency is represented by the social objects that we exchange with one other: words, videos, reactions, links. What I publish is social currency. We can measure the value of this currency in each exchange by its reach, resonance, and ultimately influence. However, it's sum is greater than its parts. If I'm looking to weigh "who your are," what appears in search as well as the presentation of your profiles, tells me more than you know. It defines who I am and how much I am "worth". So social currency is a combination of actions and words.

Do you have a concrete example in mind?

I do appreciate what AMEX Open is doing. For a brand, they are earning social capital through the investment of meaningful and valuable social currency. Their intention is to build a social community through value-add. They are building a network and ecosystem, a complete engagement strategy built on social currency. They enlisted the brightest minds in the field of small business and placed them in a community where these people share content, expertise, and experience with everyone - without cost. It is a form of information commerce, with creation and curation of content. They also launched a mobile app to bring that experience to anyone anywhere. Their idea is to earn social capital by making a contribution to the wider community of small business owners.

What they want is not only immediate returns, but indirect and long term returns. They invest in priceless commodities: information and insights. They create a unique bond with the people they want to reach, and build social capital, something even stronger than goodwill.

I was interviewed by Swisster for an article on the recent bans of Facebook by several Swiss organizations. My conclusion: people who love their job don't waste time on Facebook (and bans won't work because of, among other things, Facebook Mobile). The good news is that several organizations have more balanced answers, mostly in the private sector:

When Philip Morris International was contacted in July, it confirmed restricted access, but has since then revised its policy.

"PMI employees have been provided access to social media sites, including Facebook, strictly for private purposes only. When accessing such sites, employees must refrain from communicating any business or product related information and always ensure the use of such internet platforms is for private purposes," Iro Antoniadou in the press office explains.

Nestlé Suisse appears to more liberal and "does not restrict access to social networks, including Facebook. Their use is under the responsibility of our collaborators and we are fully confident that they use them with reason," Nestlé spokesman Philippe Oertlé specifies.

Nor have the cantons of Vaud or Geneva decided on a ban. Patrick Genoud, technology councillor at the Technology Observatory of Geneva canton defends the principle that social networks are a source of capital. [...]

"The hard truth," says Laurent Haug, founder and director of Lift Conference, the international gathering that explores the social implications of new technologies, "is that the only solution is to give people a job they like! That way they don't need to go on Facebook."

Link

Commercial break: The dynamics of communities will be one of the themes discussed at Lift11. Get your ticket at the early bird price of 590chf for three days!

Working with a 6000+ members community is a fascinating and demanding process. Fascinating because you can really unleash virtually unlimited energy to achieve your goals. Demanding because you need to keep up with everything that comes your way, check the links you receive, assess a lot more info than you would normally have to deal with if you had worked alone.

^{Massive antennas seen downtown Portland. Gathering what data?}

Now this is cool: following our call for network analysis specialists, we got many recommendations I wanted to share to contribute back to the discussion. I believe this transparency - and the ongoing debate it will contribute to generate - will outweigh the risk of having other events dig into our list of potential speakers ;) Do you think it's the right bet?

• Riyaad Minty from Al Jazeera (recommended by Esra Dogramaci), where he currently works as part of the New Media team, specialising in mobile and social media.

• Charles Armstrong (recommended by Mike Stenhouse), ethnographer and business innovator, serves as CEO of Trampoline Systems, a software vendor providing network analysis solutions for large organisations.

• Bernie Hogan (recommended by Thibaut Thomas) is a research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford.

• Jukka Pekka Onnela & Peter Gloor (recommended by Sachin Gaur).

• Karen Stephenson (recommended by Frank Boermeester) to talk about the future of social capital.

• Emmanuel Lazega (recommended by Antonio Casilli), Professor of sociology at the University of Paris – Dauphine, senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France, director of the Observatory of Intra- and Inter-Organizational Networks, and director of the Research Master in Sociology at Dauphine.

Now to the hardest part: inviting the right person who can deliver a good speech in front of 1000 people. Have you seen any of them on stage recently?

The past, present and future are made of social connections. What will happen when objects and buildings join the party?

For buildings, you might already know a little if you watched Yang Soo-In's Lift talk on the Living City, skyscrapers communicating with each other to say something like "there is a cold wave at my location, it is coming your way, start your heaters". Not as useless as it first sounded.

Now what happens when vehicles also become members of social networks? "On Twitter, no one knows you’re a car" writes the New York Times, discussing the recent Ford American Journey 2.0, a project to experiment "applications combining social networks, GPS location awareness, and real-time vehicle data".

The project had several goals: see how a trip can be "socialized", allowing followers and fellow travelers to receive meaningful information, find out how web applications could use the data generated by a car, how the interface would work, and connect the car to existing social networks to see how it could communicate by itself in natural language.

^{Project map from Razorfish's Headlight blog.}

Concretely, the car took screenshots of its interior and of the road (and will have to develop an algorythm to blur plates and faces if it wants to do so in privacy-concerned countries like Switzerland), sent messages describing the road conditions it was facing ("I am not too happy about this weather. Current conditions: mostly cloudy day"), and checked-in at locations it was visiting. Nothing too revolutionary.

But remember one cardinal rule of innovation: very often, "what begins as a lark develops into a major invention". This could have interesting usages: localization and alert in case of emergency, tracking and broadcasting to surroundings for stolen cars, sharing and archiving of trips, tracking of driver's localization for senior or young drivers, etc. Not as useless as it sounds, again.

This will be an interesting area to follow, because it involves such a mass product and because social technologies will be one of the major differentiating factor car makers have at their disposal to attract more customers. Now admit it: this plus an electric engine, that would be nice right?

Links:
• NYT: Social Networking for Cars
• Living City talk at Lift Asia 08 by Yang Soo-In's profile.
• A project this reminds me of: GPS taxi for women in Korea.
• Ford American Journey 2.0 project homepage.
• Make Magazine: American Journey 2.0: AJtheFiesta takes Boulder.
• Nicolas Nova on the importance of futility in innovation.
• Switzerland Tells Google To Take Down Street View
• Ford’s American Journey 2.0 – Redux

See the Lift10 social networks activity on a map created by Fabien Girardin:

We have been capturing the activity generated around various social networks (Flickr, Foursquare) in Geneva from data available via these services API. Through data analysis and visualization techniques, we produced an interactive map of the city, revealing photogenic areas (e.g. the waterfront) with public places (e.g. Bains des Pâquis, Parc des Bastion) and events (e.g. Geneva Motor Show, Geneva Festival) people like to share online. The result shows these dynamic information layers with their spatial and temporal trends as invitations to explore or rediscover Geneva.

Link

Beside team communications, this blog features posts written by community members. If you have a Lift account you can also share your thoughts and ideas by clicking here. Here is a post by Euromed Management's Michel Gutsatz about rethinking business schools.

"Here You will See the World through Different Eyes"

The Euromed Management signature was chosen a few years ago because we wanted to tell the business world that our responsibility was to open new perspectives for our students. We stand for diversity & for complexity, we mix globalization & localization AND we train international, responsible leaders & entrepreneurs.
This vision has led us to develop within the School an Innovation School - where students can learn, exchange virtually. It led us to partner with numerous Business Schools abroad and offer our students the possibility to work & learn throughout the world.

It now leads us a step further, to questions like:
- can we imagine a School without walls?
- can we build a School where students spend most of the time in corporations or NGOs or any place where they wish to build their professional career?
- what place for technology in this project?

These questions have led us to Lift, the first brick in the wall of this Business School 2.0, maybe a school without walls?!?

Jon Cabiria has been travelling extensively, discussing his recent research on virtual world permeability and transference, which he unveiled and summarized at LIFT08 this past February. After LIFT08, his speaking engagements continued through Europe and the U.S. Later this month, he presents a seminar at the U.S. Department of Defense National Defense University, entitled: Virtual worlds: Immersive learning strategies for overseas engagements, focussing on diplomacy uses, not war. He will also be speaking at the prestigious International Congress on Psychology in Berlin, as well as at the 4th European Conference on Positive Psychology in Rijeka, Croatia, both this coming July.

Jon is currently engaged in research that looks at how we can utilize online social networks, along with positive psychology assessments and appreciative inquiry processes, to aid organisations and individuals in achieving goals, especially those related to social issues. He is also looking at online social networks as a natural extension of human evolution, which he expects to discuss during his 2009 speaking tour.

Using communications technologies and online social networks, Jon continues his consulting and coaching practice from wherever he is in the world, as well as facilitates his popular Human Growth and Development course. Jon continues to receive amazing feedback from his LIFT08 appearance and looks forward to LIFT09.

Pierre Bellanger talks about the future of social networks. As the founder and owner of Europe's largest site of such a kind (and the 17th most visited site on earth), he has a very interesting vision on what directions these tools will take, and hints at a future made of instant communication and mobile.

here's the latest Lift bit over on GenevaLunch, but since we all need more love, we're sharing it here:
[Ed. note: GenevaLunch is carrying a series of articles on the Lift08 conference: articles on Lift08]

Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - "Games are about 'me'," believes Robin Hunicke, electronic game designer and artificial intelligence expert. As part of a panel about the future of the online gaming industry at the Lift08 Conference in Geneva, Hunicke calls games "beautiful," "amazing" and "magical."

Hunicke_lift08 Photo: Robin Hunicke on the stage's large screen at Lift08.

Future games should be designed to make the user feel special and connected to a community, loved, Hunicke said. Games should make users feel "like they're living".

According to Hunicke, the social networking site Facebook should be an inspiration for the future of online games. "Facebook is about me, and not about all of us," Hunicke said. "Facebook makes me feel like I matter." Gamers, Hunicke believes, want to feel at the centre of the world created by the game.

On the non-human side of gaming, Bruno Bonnell, founder and former CEO of the gaming company Infogrames says that entertainment will involve robotics in the future. "When you see a robot, it's almost like a fantasy," Bonnell says. People want to interact with machines. He predicts that In the future our homes, cars, and workplaces will house numerous robotic devices with which we will carry on conversations, and which will follow our commands.