This document discusses factors that influence user adoption of social media features. It summarizes current research on relationships like strong ties, weak ties, and temporary ties. However, it argues this research does not predict which tools people will use. Instead, it proposes examining specific social transactions and whether tools make those transactions easier and cheaper by reducing "permission boundaries," which capture the costs of sharing information online. Tools that facilitate transactions with strong ties through low permission boundaries will see more adoption.

1. Social Media, Permission Boundaries and User Adoption:How to Choose Social Media Features for Your Company or Software(Will people use it or not –Facebook or MySpace)

2. An evolving framework for making choices on social networking features that people will use

3. Who Am I ? Product Manager and Lead Spokesperson for Vertabase Project Management Software. Former Wall Street Analyst. Economist by training (London School of Economics and University of Michigan). http://www.vertabase.com/blog/16/

5. MySpace beat GeoCities and AOL

6. Google beat Yahoo

7. Twitter is in a totally different league and is kicking butt

8. You Tube is in a totally different league and is kicking butt (though MySpace still has a place)

9. LinkedIn lives in its own successful little world

10. Skype is an entire Universe

11. AIM is trying to survive (while MSN has a much bigger and wealthier parent to take care of it)

12. FourSquare is the latest flavor of the day

13. Wikis still abound

14. Message boards are still very active

16. Meanwhile Someone in your company sees all this happening and says “we need that” and now you’ve got to build it or buy it.

18. And why.

19. What will work.

21. Don't focus on technology. Focus on people's behavior. Up to know, this has meant studying the type of relationship someone has with someone else.

22. Don't focus on the advertiser. Almost all of the research and studies have been from the perspective of the advertiser or the ad platform. Is it any wonder it has been framed as “how can we understand the consumer so we can better connect with them.”

23. I propose a new framework for determining what to build or buy.

24. Specifically This talk explores the factors that influence user adoption of social media in a system. It talks about the current research on social media and proposes a framework for helping make choices on what social media aspects to include in your system.

26. BUT

27. It does not help you select the right tools or features for a piece of software (or really, any system).

28. This kind of analysis hasn’t been a predictor or indicator of what will or will not work.

31. Pick the feature/the tool that works and has the biggest impact.

33. In the case of social media this translates into “is it easier for the user to conduct the key parts of their relationship with another person or group of people using the tool.” In other words: Is it easier or harder for them to make the social transaction.

34. If it is easier, cheaper and faster, they will use it.

35. If not, not. Not even if you try to “make” them.

37. We are only now learning about the implications of connecting ourselves and information to others and to other information online.

39. It’s a general category that encompasses a lot but is still valuable for helping define and select the cost side of the adoption equation.

41. It is the cost/benefit boundary against which the use/don’t use decision is made for a social media component of a system.

43. Context and Control

44. There are tons of physical and temporal cues

45. And physical and temporal separations

46. That provide context to your behavior

47. Information is not as fluid in RL. There is no “hot” information (like hot money)

48. We are already good at controlling and managing our personas and actions in RL.

50. All of these aspects are managed in physical world, we know how to so this. But online just starting and the cost of managing can be high and inconvenient and consequences big.

53. We don’t have to worry about these in real world since there is a perception that information is far easier to control, different groups don’t cross as easily, information is less fluid in RL and there are many visual, spatial and temporal cues we have to be able to define and control our permission boundaries.

55. Permission Boundaries You’ll know it when you see it. As we talk about relationships, we’ll come to a more solid definition.

57. There are a ton of different social transactions that happen.

58. Instead of trying to come up with a single unified theory of all human behavior that translates seamlessly to an evolving online environment.

60. To start, though, let’s look at the current research on relationships.

61. Types of Relationships This is where a huge amount of research has been done on social networking and social media. Strong Ties, Weak Ties and Temporary Ties.

63. He pulled from published information and internally research from Google.

64. We’ll start by summarizing the findings.

66. They looked at 342 different groups (that people identified when they mapped out their social networks)

67. only 12% of the contained the word "friend" in it.

68. only 3% were called simply "friends"

69. 85% of the groups did not contain the word “friends”

71. Let’s Look at the Bonds Connecting People Then

72. Strong Ties Defined. A study of 3,000 randomly chosen Americans showed that the average American has just four strong ties. Most had between two and six.

73. Another study of 1,178 adults found that on average, people had about 10 friends they meet or speak with at least weekly.

74. In another study, researchers analyzed all the photographs posted on Facebook pages in one college. When they looked at how many friends people had (based on who was in their photos), the average was 6.6

75. The average number of friends on Facebook is 130, and many users have many more. Yet despite having hundreds of friends, most people on Facebook only interact regularly with 4 to 6 people.

76. As We See Many research studies have shown that the vast majority of usage on social networks is with small numbers of strong ties. So What? Doesn’t Help With Tool Selection Doesn’t have any predictive value.

78. 80% of phone calls are made to the same 4 people.

79. The phone was a facilitator –cheaper and easier to conduct the social transaction.

81. Technology Enables But Doesn’t Build Ties Studies in online gaming show that gamers are most often playing with strong ties who they already know.

82. Maybe Strong Ties, Does Tell Us Something Strong ties often wield the most influence over people's decisions. For example, they are often the biggest factor in purchase decisions.

83. Or Not But not all strong ties have same effect. I wouldn’t ask my mother for a clothing recommendation but she is a very strong tie (and she buys me clothes in December anyway : )

84. So we are back in the world of the nuance of social interactions. Not all strong ties are equal in all social transactions. But at least we learned that technology enables us to transact socially with people we already know, if its cheaper and easier. If it makes sense against our permission boundary

85. Permission Boundary Break (with a transaction snuck in) That’s a detail of permission boundary. What kind of products or advice you would take from which people. And what would you expect to give/be asked for, from whom. That transaction alone, getting product advice, could be a huge matrix and Ph.D. study.

86. One Path For Empirical Research Is to create a pick a particular social transaction and map the permission boundary for it.

87. Key Concept When we talk about cheapest and easiest, we’re talking about COST in terms of permission boundaries. The cost includes managing one’s profile / identity as overhead. Privacy impacts RL impacts like finding a job or a spouse.

89. Some people you met recently.

90. Typically, we communicate with weak ties infrequently.

92. This number has been consistent throughout history.

93. Neolithic farming villages tended to separate into two once they reached 150 inhabitants.

94. The Roman army was split into groups of 150 so that everyone in the group knew each other. (That’s why the movie 300 was twice the fun of other sandal and sword movies.)Source: Paul Adams Preso

96. There is evidence that when online games involving social interaction reach about 150 active users, group cohesion collapses, resulting in dissatisfaction and defection.

97. Similarly, Wikipedia involvement tends to plateau at about 150 active administrators.Source: Paul Adams Preso

98. Paul Adams Says: Online social networks make it easier to reconnect and catch up with weak ties We can now look at what they've been up to via their online social network profile. This lets us easily communicate with them - it gives us a lightweight route to get back in touch. This is a powerful route when we're sourcing new information.

100. It is ready made to customize and requires almost no effort.

102. It allowed people to do this.

103. Cheaper and Easier.

104. Much less worries and hassles about privacy (a factor in permission boundaries) than MySpace

105. But now that’s changed and the personalized/controlled experience is becoming diluted.

108. Twitter is pure personalization of “info in” (search)

109. Facebook is personalization of “info in” (search) and “info out” (customized, targeted micro publishing)

112. Some young adults use email to communicate with their strongest ties because their social network is overloaded with information from lots of different people, and their message might not be noticed.

114. Status updates are often perceived as a narcissistic activity. But research has indicated that they support important social functions. People have four primary reasons for updating their status:

115. - People update their status to shape how others perceive them.

116. - People update their status to maintain and grow relationships.

117. - People update their status to share content that others might find valuable.

120. These are ties that are explicitly connected to one time or very infrequent social transactions.

121. To me, its like trying to lump all the unknown “friend” categories into one bucket.

122. To me, its far more valuable, in terms of tool and feature selection, to drop that category.

124. That’s why the less you need to manage of it, the better.

125. This is a key to how “elastic” a permission boundary is in social network system. The lower the overhead is to manage identity and privacy (i.e. the user assumes the system is doing it for them) the more elastic the permission boundary i.e. the more free the information will flow in and out. The boundary will bend to allow more to pass in and out.

128. Or that it should be a requirement on your RFP for a solution you are purchasing.

129. It means that you need to understand the full import of the transaction you are asking or allowing users to conduct on your network.

132. 44% take steps to limit the amount of personal information available about them online

133. 71% change their privacy settings

134. 47% delete unwanted comments on their profiles

135. 41% remove their name from photos

138. Because they don't have the visual or environmental cues that being in a physical environment have.

139. Because its totally new. And changing every day.

141. Let's imagine these girls were gossiping about this guy. When he comes over, they stop. Their conversation isn't persistent.

142. But if this gossip happens on their Facebook walls, and it does, then it remains there for the guy to find at any point in time. Not only that, but it could be weeks old, or months, or even years.Source: Paul Adams Preso

144. In 2010, this grew to over 70%

145. Not to mention cyber-bullying.

147. Planning a party or club event or FNM or WoW

148. Consumer-Provider transaction (phone, IM, FAQ self serve)

149. Sharing project information (a tricky one wrt context)

150. Just chatting (texting, IM or chat)

151. Keeping up with others (posts)

152. Projecting a persona, pretending (posts or 2nd Life)

153. Finding a relationship with someone

154. Keeping track of company acronyms (wiki)

156. Users will adopt or not adopt based on cost/benefit

157. The cost is weighed against their permission boundaries (which tries to capture the nuanced and complex nature of people’s relationships with each other)

159. We are learning about it and adapting as it evolves.

160. Keep in mind though: VL is mostly driven by commercial interests and will only exist as long it is economically sensible for it to exist.

161. Commercial players, government and others can change the playing field in a minute.