Innovation in Online Communities

Innovation in online communities - Towards community-centric design 1st International ICST Conference on User Centric Media - UCMedia 2009 Venice, 9-11 December 2009 Petter Bae Brandtzæg PhD candidate at SINTEF ICT & University of Oslo pbb@sintef.no Twitter @PetterBB 1

Co-authors Asbjørn Følstad, SINTEF ICT Marianna Obrist, University of Salzburg David Geerts, University of Leuven Rüdiger Berg, NetColgone 2

Lessons learned (IST, FP6 www.ist-citizenmedia.org, 2006-2009) (www.recordproject.org , 2006-2010) Both projects explore how people interact and create user-generated content in online communities Experiences from the user involvement of more than 10.000 people Challenges and opportunities involving online communities – and a shift from user centric–design towards community-centric design 3

“anything that changes the way groups get things done will affect society as a whole” (p. 23) 4

A new form of “group action” driven by new tools and a new usage pattern Web 1.0 Web 2.0 Browsing Searching Creating/sharing Socializing Passive information The web got a lot of Blogging and diverse Social networking gets consumption on the web. information. The amount of Web 2.0 services makes it popular. User collaborate Activity was related to write in information made easier for the non- and co-create new virtual addresses to find information it difficult for the users to find professional environments and content. made by professionals. and retrieve web info. user to create and share They share, tag and educate Newspapers on the web is New search engines was digital content. YouTube each other. Social networking typical examples. taking place. Google take off. and Blogging take off. as Facebook is a Single use, passive consumption Active and collaborative group action 5 (Brandtzæg & Heim, 2008)

70% Online communities reach nearly 70 percent of the total global online audience, ranking as one of the most popular categories on the Web (Abraham, ComScore, 2009). 6

Transparency Blogs Wikis Sharing Participation Innovation Mashups Co-creation 7

A new i economy based on voluntary group activity in communities Increased transparency, sharing of knowledge, information, experiences, ideas, through co-creation in online communities 8

Mass Collaboration Wisdom of Crowds 9

Online communities are blurring the border between producer and users PARTICIPATION & SHARING: Involve non-professional community users to contribute with ideas TRANSPARANCY: Companies give away control (e.g. source code, professional content) to the community CO-CREATION: Enable community users to improve their product and extend their services thorough co- creation (and in that way also bridge the digital divide) 10

The key for the Future Internet is to bring together professional and non-professional media creators (Daras and Alvarez, 2009) 11 Daras, P., Alvarez, F (2009). A future perspective on the 3D Media Internet. In: Tselentis, G.e.a. (ed.): Towards the Future Internet – A European Perspective. IOS Press. 303-312

MyIdea4CA.com, an online community to harvest and evaluate ideas (16 000 per 7.12.09) for the State of California 12

Dell IdeaStorm is a website launched by Dell on February 16, 2007 to allow Dell "to gauge which ideas are most important and most relevant to" the public 13

Facebook is even innovating for peace 15

How to build successful online communities supporting innovation? Online community success Content sharing, Social capital co-creation Challenges (e.g. social distrust, privacy, low usability, etc.) 16 Brandtzæg et al., submitted

New forms of digital divides emerge Digital consumer divides; ability to consume media content. Digital production divides; ability to produce media content. 17 (Brandtzæg, 2007)

In large communities: 90-9-1 rule (Nilsen, 2006) 18

1% contribute 19

Wikipedia written by single men in the age 18-30 years 1 out 10 are women Source: Wikimedia/J.Wales (2009): http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/strategy/e/eb/State_of_the_Wiki.pdf 20

Participation and user generated content is not for the ”average user” "The average user is too busy" "They just want to get work done" Jakob Nielsen, a Web design expert BusinessWeek Online 2007 with consultant Nielsen Norman 26.Sept. ”It’s a whole new web” Group 21

In small communities: 50-30-20 rule 20% 30% 50% Lurkers (Brandtzæg & Heim, in press) 22

So…how to involve ”all” community-users in the innovation process? Foto: michelhrv (Flickr, creative commons) 23

Challenges How to filter and analyze all the contributions How to identify the right kind of communities and participants? Participation, yes! But what about commitment in long innovation processes? 24

The Living Lab revival http://www.openlivinglabs.eu/ 25

What are Living Labs? Environments for innovation and development … where users are exposed to new solutions … in familiar contexts … as part of medium – or long term studies New term within the field of ICT Emerging concept Limited literature Innovation support Context research Main target of ENoLL Living Labs Discovery …even though Living Labs were not originally Co-creation thought of as arenas for co-creation and Commercially community action Evaluation available Technical testing product 26

Beyond the user-centric approach - Towards community-centric design 27

Conclusion Still, community-centric methods are immature, and existing user- centric design methods need to be adapted in order to fit a new paradigm for innovation in online communities New approaches such as Living Labs are promising, but further development of associated methods and processes is needed A community-centric design approach is being recognized, as this will help companies to tap into the enormous potential co-creation with communities offer for creating new applications and services on the Future Media Internet 28

Thank you ☺ This paper was supported by the Norwegian research council and EC, IST FP6 Presentation shared at: www.slideshare.net/PetterB More information at: www.recordproject.org www.ist.citizenmedia.org 29

References Abraham, L. B/ComScore. (2009). Cracking the Code of Social Media Measurement: ComScore. Brandtzæg, P.B., & Heim, J. (Accepted September, 2009). Social Network Sites – A Typology of Users. International Journal of Web Based Communities (IJWBC) Brandtzæg, P.B., Lüders, M. , Skjetne (submitted). Social practices and privacy in social networking sites. Journal of Human Computer Interaction Brandtzæg, P.B.(2007). The Innovators in the New Media landscape. The Cost 298 Conference - The Good, the Bad and the Unexpected, Moscow, Russia. Daras, P., Alvarez, F (2009). A future perspective on the 3D Media Internet. In: Tselentis, G.e.a. (ed.): Towards the Future Internet - A European Perspective. IOS Press. 303-312 Shirky, C.(2009). Here comes everybody. The power of organizing without organizations. Penguin books, New York Wikimedia/J.Wales (2009): http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/strategy/e/eb/State_of_the_Wiki.pd f 30

Innovation in Online Communities

by Petter Bae Brandtzæg

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