This document summarizes Thomas Vander Wal's presentation on understanding social comfort to improve social tool adoption. It discusses how social comfort has three parts - comfort with people, tools, and content. It also examines how to build comfort with people through sharing experiences and transparency. For tools, it explores how features like open sharing can impact comfort levels. Finally, it analyzes how personal issues may be more difficult to discuss due to impacts on social comfort. The goal is to understand social comfort better to enhance adoption of social technologies.

1. Understanding Social Comfort to
Improve Social Tool Adoption
Thomas Vander Wal - InfoCloud Solutions, Inc.
24 March 2010
eXtension Webinar

2. Non-digital Story

3. Commonwealth Club
of California

4. Understanding Social Software
for Mainstream Adoption

5. “I don’t want to be the company idiot!”

6. Look to human
social interactions

7. Social Scripts

8. Rethink how tools
map to human needs

9. What is Trust?

10. Too many
components to trust

11. Stop using
the term trust

12. Encourage the use
of words that
describe trust

13. Respect Comfort
Dependable Valued
Honest Treasured
Loved Believable
Consistent Etcetera...

14. Social Comfort

15. 3 Parts of
Social Comfort
• Social Comfort with People
• Social Comfort with Tools
• Social Comfort with Content

16. Social Comfort
with People

17. Elements of
Social Software

18. Relationships
Reputation
Conversation
Groups
Sharing
Identity Object
Collaboration
Actions
Presence

19. Collaboration
Groups
Conversation
Relationship
Reputation Build
Order
Sharing
Actions
Presence
Identity Object

20. Collaboration
Groups
Traditional
Groupware Conversation
Relationship
Reputation Build
Order
Sharing
Actions
Presence
Identity Object

21. Who Are These People?

22. Paradox of Familiarity
• Familiarity through working together
• Familiarity through reputation
• Hallway familiarity

23. Building Comfort
with People
• Similar interest
• Similar life stories
• Similar experiences

24. Building Comfort with
People
• Sharing experiences
• One’s own experiences
• Saved the family farm
• Cancer survivor

25. Building Comfort with
People
• Empathetic
• Compassion
• Understanding of emotion
• Similar experiences

26. Consumating’s
“Quirkiness Factor”

27. Transparency

28. What are things that
would erode comfort?

29. Be clear about issues
and list them up front
• “I am one of ‘them’”
• “I am paid staff”

30. Profiles

31. Do profiles build bonds?
• Breadth of social possible connections
• Contextual disclosure
• Things in common between people
• Relevance of semi-private disclosure

32. Social Comfort
with Tools

33. Walled Gardens vs.
Open Sharing

34. Sharepoint default

35. Lack of comfort with
open sharing

36. Comfortable spaces
with permeable walls

37. Social Reticence of a Click

38. “How broadly are my
activities shared”

39. “What do others think
‘this’ means”

40. What do the features
and functions of the
tools/service do?

41. Social Progressions
• Personal
• Ideas shared (sparks)
• Gathering of others with interests
(campfire)
• Broader interest gathering (bonfire)
• Honing for broad use and replications
(torch)

42. Social Comfort
with Content

43. 100% of content that is
potentially sharable

44. Content Sharing
Paradox

45. When people need to find
“others like me”
This is often the trigger
eroding fears around
social comfort

46. The more personal the
issue, the more difficult
it is to attain social
comfort

47. Externally Focussed
Social Empathy
• Sharing may hurt others
• Not wanting to “rock the boat”
• Whistle blowing concerns

48. Social Comfort
as a Whole

49. Thank You!

50. Credit of Other’s Photos
• Commonwealth Club, by Steve Rhodes photo of Lowell
Bergman - http://www.flickr.com/photos/ari/389255633/sizes/l/

51. URL: http://infocloudsolutions.com
E-mail: thomas@infocloudsolutions.com
AIM: vanderwal
Skype: tjvanderwal
Twitter: @vanderwal or @infocloud
InfoCloud Solutions, Inc. - 2010