Seduction Of The Swarm: Understanding patterns of online participation

Slide 1: Seduction of the Swarm Understanding patterns of online participation

Slide 2: Hello University of Maryland College Park

Slide 6: Sousveillance Lifecasting as grassroots surveillance

Slide 8: What’s the big deal? It’s like firing up all the light bulbs at once.

Slide 9: That “Web 2.0” idea Web 1.0 = Browsing (passive) Web 2.0 = Participating (active)

Slide 10: Collective Intelligence “the capacity of a human community to evolve toward higher order complexity thought, problem-solving and integration through collaboration and innovation.” - George Por

Slide 12: On Coordination the folksonomy example

Slide 13: Taxonomy Dewey Decimal System: Religion • 292 Classical • 293 Germanic religion • 294 Indic origin • 295 Zoroastrianism • 296 Judaism • 297 Islam • 298 Not assigned • 299 Other religions • … What about Buddhism?

Slide 14: Taxonomy • From the \"to classify” Greek verb: tassein = nomos = law, science, \"economy\" • The science of classifying things • Hierarchical tree-like structure • Requires planning and expertise

Slide 15: Folksonomy how photo tagging works

Slide 16: Folksonomy photos tagged as “gadget”

Slide 17: Folksonomy tagcloud of LibraryThing’s books Source: http://www.librarything.com/tagcloud.php

Slide 18: Folksonomy • Folksonomy = folk + taxonomy • Open, democratic form of organization • Tags bridge structure and meaning • Tags reflect the social fabric • “It’s like 90% of10 ‘proper’ a taxonomy but times simpler” (Butterfield, 2004)

Slide 19: On Cooperation the wiki example

Slide 21: FluWiki the bird flu pandemic

Slide 22: The New PR / Wiki public relations industry wiki

Slide 23: What is a Wiki? • The first Wiki, WikiWikiWeb, was created by Ward Cunningham in 1995 • Named after Hawaiian bus service,Wiki Wiki • “The simplest online database that could possibly work” - Ward • Allows users to easily create and edit Web pages using any Web browser • Encourages democratic use of Web • Source: http://wiki.org/wiki.cgi?WhatIsWiki

Slide 24: Wikipedia vs. Britannica • Among 42 entries tested in both encyclopedias, the difference in accuracy was not great. • On the topical area of science: • Wikipedia had 4 inaccuracies • Britannica had 3 inaccuracies

Slide 25: On Cognition the wisdom of the crowds example

Slide 26: Wisdom of the Crowds • Francisat a county fair accurately Galton's surprise that the crowd guessed the weight of an ox when their individual guesses were averaged • The average was closer to the ox's true butchered weight than the estimates of most crowd members, and also closer than any of the separate estimates made by cattle experts

Slide 27: Wisdom of the Crowds • Marketocracy.com’s community of 60,000 online stock traders tracks the decisions of its top 100 portfolios to set the investment strategy for its mutual fund. • Its index in 11outperformed the has S&P 500 of the past 17 quarters.

Slide 28: Benefits of Participation • collective intelligence - collaborative • transparent - instant gratification • non-hierarchical - democratic • potential for passion - ownership • open to public - reputation • permanence - searchable resource

Slide 29: What make online communities unique?

Slide 30: Motivations of the Gift Economy • • Need Reciprocity One may produce and The most anticipated factor that contribute a public good for the motivates people to give. simple reason that a person or the groups as a whole has a • Reputation need for it. The willingness to help others can all work to increase one's prestige • Attachment in a community. The commitment one has to the group, one’s utility. • Sense of Efficacy The feeling an individual has that • Side-effect makes them feel that they have Private behavior makes cost of some effect on the environment sharing near zero. around them.

Slide 31: Nature of Digital Goods • In an online community, the setting is a network of digital information. • Possible to produce an infinite number of perfect copies of a piece of information. • Information is being produced in a deeply interwoven network of actors.

Slide 32: Nature of Public Goods • Indivisible A person's consumption of the good does not reduce the amount available to another. e.g. watching fireworks display • Non-excludable When it is difficult to exclude individuals from benefiting from the good. e.g. national defense system • In most cases a public good will exhibit these two qualities to some degree only; pure public goods are the exception.

Slide 33: Digital + Public Goods • Information or “digital goods” are uniquely suited to be exchanged in a gift economy • “Pure indivisibility” – my use of information does not reduce your ability to use • Information on the internet becomes a “public good”

Slide 34: But wait... What qualities enable some web services to be more pervasive than others?

Slide 35: Using Game Mechanics • “Applying Games Mechanics To Functional Software” by Amy Jo Kim, Creative Director of ShuffleBrain • Five Game Mechanics 1. Collecting 2. Earning Points 3. Feedback 4. Exchanges 5. Customization

Slide 36: On Ambient Intimacy • Leisa Reichelt coined the term “ambient intimacy” • Describes the genreby Twitter, of social computing apps led Jaiku, and Pownce. • Refers to the constant sense of closeness users feel with their circle of friends through technologies that informally reveal us to each other.

Slide 37: On Walled Gardens • A socialbuilding and verifying of network service focuses on the online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities • Mostare “walled social networking traditional sites gardens” (e.g. Facebook) • Trap user content to derive ad revenue • Can’t leave? Loss of coordination.

Slide 38: On Future social cyborg = the human platform

Slide 39: Doom first person shooter + cinema-verite

Slide 40: Strange Days personal experiences for sale

Slide 41: Gordon Bell of Microsoft (memory prosthetic)

Slide 42: Steve Mann world’s first known cyborg

Slide 43: Jennifer Ringley (JenniCam) 1996 - 2003

Slide 44: Justin Kan (justin.tv) lifecasting goes commercial

Slide 45: Testing wearable video over EVDO... (Samsung EVDO phone, Sony Vaio UX, Logitech cam)

Slide 46: ZaoBao newspaper (July 2007)

Slide 47: On You what do you want to know?