Community as an Asset

Community As an Asset by Evgeny Morozov May 10th, 2008

New Media and Old Media

MSM to New Media

Result: Tipping of Media Scales

Old vs New

Old+New=Social Media

From Public Sphere to Networked Public Sphere

Networked Reflection

Blogsourcing

Sharing ideas in Flat vs Round Worlds

The Bored at Work Network “ Hundreds of millions of bored office workers sit in front of computers forwarding emails, blogging, IMing, and playing on social network sites. These distracted corporate employees have accidentally created the Bored at Work Network (BWN) -- a huge people-powered network with greater even reach than traditional networks like CNN, ABC, or the BBC.” -Jonah Peretti

How many man hours are being spent on playing Solitaire every year?

9 billion

How many man hours were spent to build Empire State Building?

7 million

Is there a better way to spend one's office time than Solitaire?

Google Image Labeler

Evolution of Captcha

Soylent Green the Soylent Grid team estimates that Digg users could identify an image approximately every 17 seconds. That's far from fast enough for someone hurrying through their shopping. Belongie estimates that five seconds would be an acceptable turnaround time, so GroZi would need 25 times the CAPTCHA-producing power of Digg University of California at San Diego

Is human interaction becoming more important as technology gets smarter?

Human-based computation It's a technique when a computational process performs its function via outsourcing certain steps to humans (Kosorukoff, 2001)‏

Human-based Computation In traditional computation, a human employs a computer to solve a problem: a human provides a formalized problem description to a computer, and receives a solution to interpret. In human-based computation, the roles are often reversed: the computer asks a person or a large number of people to solve a problem, then collects, interprets, and integrates their solutions .

What motivates participants in human-based motivation programs? * Receiving a fair share of the result * Direct monetary compensation (e.g. in Amazon's Mechanical turk, ChaCha Search guide)‏ * Desire to diversify their activity (e.g. "people aren't asked in their daily lives to be creative" [1])‏ * Aesthetic satisfaction * Curiosity, desire to test if it works * Volunteerism, desire to support a cause of the project * Reciprocity, exchange, mutual help * Competitive spirit of a game * Desire to communicate and share knowledge * Desire to share a user innovation to see if someone else can improve on it * Desire to game the system and influence the final result

Individual actions are fine; but what about community actions and on a larger scale?

Crowdsourcing

What is crowdsourcing? ...the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people, in the form of an open call

...but why do we need it?

Too much data

Too much bad data unstructured/poorly formatted

Relevance+Structure Wikipedia=Google, crowdsourced

The Old Model

“ No one knows everything, everyone knows something, all knowledge resides in humanity (i.e. networks/communities” Pierre Levy, 1997

Take Away=Build Networks

FLIRT model of Crowdsourcing

F ocus

L anguage

I ncentives

R ules

T ools

C reators

C ritics

C onnectors

C rowds

FLIRT model of Crowdsourcing

Focus

Issue Area

Scale of collaboration

Depth of user control

LANGUAGE

Authenticity

Transparency

Understand & respect

context

customer

Know social objects & emphasize social verbs

Show them you’re affected

INCENTIVES

Intrinsic

Better life

Challenge

Creativity

Satisfying curiosity

Learning

Fun & Enjoyment

Extrinsic

Immaterial

Fame

Recognition (peer & company)‏

Access to channels & resources

Reciprocity / community

Material

Own products and services

3rd party offerings

Other non-monetary rewards

Cash rewards

RULES

Communicate: shared focus and objectives

Rules of initiation

Rules of interaction

Rules of intellectual exchange

Manufacturing constraints

Arbitrary rules

spur creativity

TOOLS

Platform

own / 3rd party / hybrid

Tools for creation

web service / SW / physical devices / ideas

Encourage unexpected use

Skills & knowledge

required education

Company tools

harvesting & measuring contribution

converting it into action

CREATORS

Generate original ideas/content

Compete for the best solution

In it for

the challenge

learning

fame

recognition

explicit rewards

Key issues

feed intrinsic motivation

offer relevant extrinsic motivation

ensure sufficient level of creative freedom

CRITICS & CONNECTORS

Involved in the conversation

Spread the word

Aim to influence a large # of people

Critics

emphasize opinions

seek authority among their audience

Connectors

emphasize sharing

seek to connect with a large audience

Key issues

Be transparent & authentic

Enable effective conversation

Interact

CROWDS

Low-level participation

Activate in key events

” The group formerly known as consumers”

Communicate mostly with ”friends”

Decide what truly has value and what is useless

Key issues

eliminate barriers to participation

show influence in real time

draw into deeper levels of participation

You can't have a successful community project, if you don't understand your community

Ladder of Engagement

3 levels of collaboration 1. Lightweight Social Processes 2. Collaborative Information Structures 3. High End Collaboration

Lightweight Social Processes Low-barrier social involvement like voting or the recording of personal information

Digg.com

Last.fm

del.icio.us

Collaborative Information Structures Core product enhanced by a social component, deeper participation to interact

Flickr

YouTube

Threadless

High-end collaboration Groups utilizing systems to make sense and share complex materials and data

Wikipedia

How do you build a community that works?

sense of community 1. feelings of membership 2. feelings of influence 3. integration and fulfillment of needs 4. shared emotional connection (McMillan and Chavis, 1986)‏

feelings of membership #arise from the creation of community boundaries #perception of emotinal safety sense of belonging to and #identification with use of common symbols, language, etc

Feelings of membership includes: personal profile pages, "friending" definign groups witin the lagarger group, invitations to groups allow for lots of personal and groups expression greet new members and introduce them to others with similar interests

feelings of influence #being able to influence group (voice heard)‏ #being able to be influenced by gropup (learning) #feedback responsiveness #rule enforecement and creation by members #maintenance of norms within the group

feelings of influence includes: forums, chat, comments, blogging, personalized amil create many ways in which members can connect and platforms for expression

Integration and fulfillment of needs # feeling of being supported by others # rewards of being a member, such as status, expertise # shared values #feeling of competence within group