This is a repost of a post on my personal blog

For my research job at BYU, I’m reading quite a bit about social software, which is, as defined by Clay Shirky, software that supports group interactions. One article I read recently by Clay entitled, “Communities, Audiences, and Scale“is especially good and provided much of the inspiration for this post. The gist of the article is that audiences scale and communities don’t. And understanding this principle I think is extra ordinarily important for designers of social software.

So what is the difference between audiences and communities? Audiences primarily consume content, communities primarily communicate with one another. TVs have audiences — they have large numbers of people that watch their content. But there is very little communication between individual watchers of TV and between the watchers and the makers of TV content. On the other hand, a small group of men who gather to play cards on Friday nights is a community — because they actively communicate with one another. Communities communicate with one another, audiences don’t.

In addition, a group is a group and a community is a community because of the connections that form between its members. Two best friends have very strong connections. A high school basketball team has connections from running lines and sitting on the bus together for long road trips.

But connections get weaker and weaker as a group or community adds more members. Connections are created by communication. With two people, all communications happens between the two people. So the connections made are very strong. Add another person and the number of connections that need to be maintained increases from 1 to 3. Add another person making 4 in the group and the number of connections increases from 3 to 6. Add another member and the connections become 10 (read Clay for more of the math). Obviously as the group grows larger and larger, the bonds weaken between individual members of the group.

This idea is encapsulated in several common English expressions like “two’s company, three’s a crowd”. Amongst young people, a person who tries to hang out with a couple feels like and is sometimes referred to as a “third wheel“. It’s possible to have 2-3 best friends but no more. The “gang” you hung out with in high school probably had 4-7 people but no more. Older people tend to have fewer friends then younger adults but with closer bonds. Clay Shirky references the research of primatologist Robin Dunbar who argues that, “humans are adapted for social group sizes of around 150 or less, a size that shows up in a number of traditional societies, as well as in present day groups such as the Hutterite religious communities.”

This contradicts a fundamental assumption of most designers of social software that “more users is always a good thing.” Different types of groups can maintain their group flavor to different sizes but at some scale all online communities start to lose the interconnections that make the community a community.

The line where an audience begins and a community ends can get rather murky with online social software. Consider for example the weblog. If three girlfriends use blogs to discuss their lives, this is obviously a community. On the other hand, a popular blogger such as Seth Goodin is not supporting a community on its blog but is operating a broadcast media platform much as CNN or Fox News.

I’m experiencing a good example of this murkiness. A Mailing list is an example of social software often used to support online communities. I am a student at BYU majoring in Information Systems. The ISys department at BYU provides a mailing list for the use of the 200+ students who are in the ISys major. The mailing list is quite popular — I’d say it sees an average of 10-20 emails during the school year

But the funny thing I’ve observed in the year or so I’ve been on the list is that even though everyone has equal rights to email the list, I see the same 10-15 names over and over. The rest of the ISys students don’t communicate via the mailing list but rather are audience members. So it seems the mailing list, as a community-building device, can’t scale past a certain number of people.

So why does it matter if our social software isn’t so social at times, or that not everyone can/will participate on a mass mailing
list? We should care because we are social creatures. In our increasingly rushed and splintered world, technology can help fulfill
our need for friends and community.

Joel Spolsky, in a post entitled “Building Communities with Software”
speaks movingly of our need as humans for community and how social software can fulfill that need. He ends his post with this message, “Creating community, in any case, is a noble goal, because it’s sorely missing for so many of us. Let’s keep plugging away at it.”

Social software done right can create a community for all its participants. I feel strongly about the need for excellent social
software, in our schools, workplaces, and other organizations. Social software can help us learn, work, and live with greater effectiveness and joy.

In my next few posts I’ll continue to explore the fundamental problems and opportunities with social software.

Successful online learning platforms

Examples of successful online community platforms

Goal

1. Open
2. Peering
3. Sharing
4. Acting Globally

Barriers

When implementing a development initiative at a global scale, that it is an important objective, considering the benefits of scalability and the benefits of engaging and communicating with a community of users, there is a variety of barriers that should be overcome including geographical, technological, institutional, ideological, demographic, and ethnic barriers. These barriers have been suggested by Birkinshaw, Bessant, & Delbridge (2007) as barriers that need to be considered when creating networks for discontinuous innovation.

1. Geographical barriers

Include the discontinuities that emerge as consequence of distance, time zones, climate and other geographical factors.

2. Technological barriers

Include the discontinuities that emerge due to digital divide, differences of technology domains, differences in protocols, etc.

3. Institutional barriers

Include the discontinuities that emerge due to differences of objectives and origins, such us the differences between private and public objectives.

4. Ideological barriers

Include the discontinuities that emerge due to customers and partners do not share the same values or norms of the global firm.

5. Demographic and ethnic barriers

These emerge due to different needs of different demographic groups and barriers that arise due to cultural differences.

When launching global initiatives is necessary to create platforms that would reduce the incidence of those barriers. This is possible when there is enough flexibility that the system works locally, regionally, or globally. When the mentioned barriers are not managed, they alone or together might obstruct the emergence of critical mass of users.

Principles:

1. Leveraging a set of possible tasks


Description: Leverage is essentially generative, the central idea is to do more with less. Wikipedia, for example, was able to create a platform that reduces the cost of interaction as was explain before but at the same time increases exponentially the potential users of the information. It has also created other opportunities for thousands of contributors. Leverage might also include what Rogers (1995) called “relative advantage” - the degree to which an innovation is perceived as better than the idea it supersedes.

Examples: “Generative systems make difficult jobs easier. The more efforts they save, and the greater the number of instances in which their use can make a difference to someone, the more generative they are.” (Zittrain, 2007, p. 51)

The concept of encyclopedia is an old idea, but Wikipedia has incorporated services and opportunities far beyond the previous idea, this is a disruptive concept that in addition did not require a largest infrastructure.

Adaptability

Description: “Adaptability applies to both the breath of a systems’s uses without change and the ease with which it can be modified to broaden its range of uses. Adaptability is a spectrum –a technology that offers hundreds of different kinds of uses is more adaptable, and thus more generative than a technology that offers fewer” (Zittrain, 2007, p. 51)

Examples:
Wikipedia for example is enormously flexible due to almost any topic can be included, but this is not the only strength, the availability of mass collaborators and an adequate platform can connect millions of people and create communities engaged in particular interests. The outcome of such interconnect dynamism can not be at this moment completely assess but certainly it will bring innovative ideas including new creative business models. Adaptability, also involves what Rogers (1995)call compatibility. I have preferred to include compatibility as an essential element of adaptability meaning that the degree to which an innovation is perceived as being consistent with past experiences or previously introduced ideas, existing values or beliefs, and the needs of potential adopters. The idea of encyclopedia was firmly rooted in the mind of people. Put in a nutshell Wikipedia is firstable an encyclopedia, on top of that, there are concepts that are expanding the idea.

Ease of Mastery

Desciption: “How easy is it for broad audiences to both adopt and adapt a technology? An airplane is neither easy to fly nor simple to modify for new purposes. Paper, on the other hand, can be readily mastered and adapted –whether to draw on or to fold into airplanes. The skills needed to use many otherwise –generative technologies may be hard to absorb, requiring apprenticeship, formal training, or long practice.” (Zittrain, 2007, p. 51)

Examples: Wikis are easy to master, compared with other kinds of technologies; Wikis is very efficient technology and easy to learn. An average user can use the technology with only a brief explanation. Rogers (1995)considers complexity- refers to the degree to which an innovation is perceived as difficult to understand and use- and important element of diffusion of innovation. In general, the more complex an innovation, the slower its rate of adoption. Complexity however is relative and depends on the relevant skills of the users. Rogers (1995) also explains the that modularization –breaking the whole in manageable and potentially muti-usable may improve easy of use. Rogers (1995) suggest that modular innovations can be broken down so that portions of the innovation can be trialed will be adopted more rapidly.

Accessibility

Description: “The easier it is to obtain the technology, tools, and information necessary to achieve mastery –and convey changes to others –the more generative a system is.” (Zittrain, 2007, p. 51)

Examples:
We have already discussed geographical, technological, institutional, ideological, demographic, and ethnic barriers that can affect accessibility. Rogers (1995) introduce the term trialability (refers to the degree to which an innovation may be experimented with on a limited basis). That can also be considered an important element of accessibility. The degree to which an innovation can be experimented might also affect its rate of adoption. Accessibility also includes observability - the degree to which results of using an innovation are visible to others, and able to be described and communicated to others- this is the first condition of accessibility before a thing is accessible it should visible to the user.

An important consideration of accessibility is what is commonly known as digital divide - “situations in which there is a marked gap in access to or use of ICT devices” (Campbell 2001, p.1). Accessibility will avoid to create parallel communication systems one for those with income, education and literally connections, giving plentiful information at low cost and high speed; the other for those without connections. Larry Huston (2007)recommends to start asking: “What are the needs of these consumers? And recommends to design a product at a price point that meets their needs under local conditions

A platform functionality blocked by barriers already mentioned must be avoided. Once past the barriers of access to new technology there are relatively cheap and efficient opportunities for the major part of the population. Small business for example using internet can offer their products to a variety of marketplaces around the world, and the fees are relatively inexpensive compared to previous options.

Conducting Appropriate Evaluations


Description: Summative and formative evaluations will provide information about the technology, the community, and individuals, their level of interactions and engagement. Appropriate measures and performance criteria might indicate if the principles suggested have been achieved.

Examples:

Consider incentives –

Description:

Examples:

(Others?: Easy to use, Free, etc...)?

Features: