Although it might not be a harbinger of lost social capital, it is undeniably sad that typing away all day has made most of us strangers to our once-good handwriting. One of my favorite scholars on the subject of technology and society, danah boyd, blogged about this last year. And now her lament has been put into wonderful comic form, in the Tampa Tribune’s Blogjam:
Add comment June 3rd, 2008
The headline says it all. On my blog, June is Online Community Month. It is so decreed. And mind you, by community, I don’t mean a particular type of web site, such as the myriad online “communities” described by forums, chat rooms and other real community metaphors. I mean real communities — that raise kids and pay taxes and send loved ones off to war — that are strengthened and propagated by online activity (maybe). In a phrase, I’m talking about computer mediated Community, with a capital C.
Friends vs. “Friends”
This may seem like splitting hairs, this online Communities versus communities business. But it is huge. It is as different a distinction as a friend is to a “friend” — one forged on Facebook (or some other social network) with the click of a mouse and the exchange of some level of web access.
My decision to devote a series of blog entries to the topic started in the Fall of last year. Ever the optimist, I had assumed that technology was the friend of community — as scary as it sometimes appears to parents of the young and keepers of the status quo. I was planning to research the topic to succinctly lay out of the facts to this view. Then I did some digging, and a lot of reading and discussing, and now I’m not so sure. Sometimes Chicken Little is right, and the sky really is falling.
I will be looking, in this U.S. election year, at political involvement online. And also the involvement of grassroots organizations. And even professional associations. I’ll be getting the help of experts where I can, and readers who are willing to provide their two cents.
Bowling Alone
I’ll also be helped by an extraordinary book that predates Web 2.0, but still has great value, from the perspective of recent history. It will also be used to fairly distribute blame, where blame is due, to technology other than modern, web-enabled networking. I’m talking about the book Bowling Alone, by Robert D. Putnam. The title comes from the phenomenon of an era that seems distant now, when we as a society bowled in leagues together, usually after work. The disintegration of this community-building ritual, along with others great and small, is exhaustively examined.
I’ll be sharing observations and statistics from the book throughout the month, as I look at this question: Has technology eroded our social fabric, or simply provided a new way to weave it?
I’ll start today with this factoid from the book — one that examines the communication technology that scared our parents the way the web does this generation’s. I’m talking about the technology that Newton Minow is 1961 called the “vast wasteland.” His famous speech used that term to describe the specific social decay that comes from a day of television:
When television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there for a day without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit-and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you — and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.
The One-fingered Salute
Bowling Alone talks about the technology of television a lot, asking if there is evidence that a society glued behind a set is more prone to ignoring the niceties that keep a community civil. Below is one interesting finding that the author used to show that it does.
It compares two self-reported activities: Participating in altruistic community events and flipping the bird to passing motorists. Here is his chart, showing the reverse correlation between contributing to what he calls “social capital” and contributing to road rage. It shows a similar direct correlation between this anti-social activity and highly valuing television. Click for a larger view, fully-legible view. (Ignore the reference to “churchgoing” in the titleby the way. It refers to additional data not shown here. It was included to help those who wish to find the entire dataset in the book’s index.)
Optimists would say that these trend lines may be coincidental. Every generation has complained about the gradual coarsening of its citizens. Web-savvy optimists, such as myself, would also argue that television can degrade “connectedness” while more modern technology aids it. Keep reading this month for more perspectives on this question, to see if I am one such optimist.
Add comment June 2nd, 2008
Join me and other members of the Milwaukee Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) at our May Mixer. It will be held at SWIG, in the Third Ward of Milwaukee. It happens this Thursday, May 22.
This event is a terrific chance to catch up with colleagues, learn a thing or two about our fast-changing field of interest, and celebrate the late arrival of summery weather — all at SWIG, a newly re-opened hot spot. Here is a map.
Registration is just $15 for members, $20 for non-members. Register online from the MIMA site. And while you have your Paypal account or credit card in hand, why not join this wonderful grassroots organization.
The festivities start at 5 PM tonight. I hope to see you there!
Add comment May 22nd, 2008
Marketing Sherpa ran an interesting piece on Friday on all things Twitter (thanks for the head’s up, Kevin). Its headline, Get Famous Using Twitter to Market Your Company & Yourself, is a tad grandiose, but the content is some of the densest I’ve read in terms of valuable ideas per word. Especially for marketers new to the medium, it’s an excellent overview and how-to.
What the post left unsaid is the bad news: It’s still difficult-to-impossible to measure real ROI for a Twitter effort. That said, from an SEO and customer service perspective, Twitter is a great tool.
Primarily, Twitter is a terrific way to measure the pulse of consumer sentiment — both cheaply and in real time.
One tool mentioned that was news to me was this one: Twitter Volume, a way to “compare how often different brands/companies/words/phrases are mentioned on Twitter.”
Conversely, a tool I love that wasn’t mentioned is this high-quality search of Tweets: Summize.com. The volume of Tweets returned is among the highest I’ve seen and the recency of the Tweets is also excellent.
Any favorite Twitter-related tactics or tools that weren’t mentioned here, or in the Sherpa piece? Let me know.
Add comment May 21st, 2008
When Thomas L. Friedman asserted that The World Is Flat, he was referring to the interconnectedness of this newly networked world. He could have also been referring to the structure of an ideal web site. Why should it be flat? The site needs to offer a way for nearly everyone to efficiently find everything with the fewest possible barriers.
Ryan Singer of 37Signals reminded me of this when he wrote that web architects should think about paths instead of hierarchies. He writes:
My friend did some work for a shoe company who wished to hide six different kinds of shoes behind a gate called “Performance”. When my friend asked 40 uninvolved people in his office what the category “performance” meant to them, only 10 had even a vague idea. So hierarchies have their problems.
My team’s web architects have often run into the same thing when beginning a redesign of a client’s web site. The language used in the architecture often hides what users are striving to find. Ryan’s solution is to, “Collect all the paths you can think of in a pile, pull out the 8 paths that 80% of your visitors come looking for, and that’s your home page. When paths overlap or the same customer needs them, weave them together.”
I’d council to do the following, as a supplement to this excellent advice:
Finally, I’d add this word of caution — three times, in fact: Test, test test! Your key audience may be of a generation where an indiosynchatic navigation system my more useful, but too initially initimidating. Baby boomers and their elders came from a time when hierarchy was not a dirty word. They may instead have a much shorter word for an elegant but unexpected site navigation: chaos!
Have I missed any other tips in making a site as flat as the digital world where it resides?
Add comment May 19th, 2008
The media have called pecha kucha — that unpronounceable presentation format created by two Tokyo architects — a poetry slam for designers. Except it’s not just for design folks.
Writers, photographers, and just about every other member of the creative class have devised and shown these six-minute wonders. Shown where, you ask? Over 100 cities around the world have conducted public pecha kucha nights. And this summer Milwaukee will be added to the list.
I created my first pecha kucha in October and became immediately hooked. I dare you to attend its official Milwaukee debut and not be bowled over by its power.
You’ll find more details at the official site, but here are the basics:
Thank you Jon Mueller of 800CEOread for helping to bring this form to Milwaukee!
2 comments May 15th, 2008
Before you struggle too hard and long over that golden prose you’ve drafted for your web site, consider this statistic, as cited on Jakob Nielsen’s USEIT.com site last week:
On average, users [in the study discussed] will have time to read 28% of the words if they devote all of their time to reading. More realistically, users will read about 20% of the text on the average page.
The takeaway: Write as though your reader has one foot out the door and the other on a banana peel. Get to the point and then move on!
1 comment May 14th, 2008
Three weeks ago, on a lark, I registered the domain name RumSocko.com. But until just now, I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to do with it.
Then, just moments ago, I learned that Google has entered the social network arena in a way that only a market behemoth can. Friend Connect will allow any site to have social network functionality. This tells me two things:
Of course, only point #1 is of real relevance to my fellow marketing technologists. There has been plenty of talk lately about how social networks are still groping for a viable revenue model. I suspect Google will lead the way to the banquet.
The only question will then be: Must other social networks resign themselves to the crumbs that Google leaves behind?
2 comments May 12th, 2008
Malcolm Gladwell recently wrote about the nature of invention, and a society’s response to it. We revere scientists as heroes, for inventing solutions to our toughest problems. Yet Gladwell points out that these geniuses seem to be more vessels than virtuosos.
The inspiration for a particular technology seems to arise “in the air,” to be picked up by the right inventive minds and made real. In many cases, such as the story of the invention of the telephone, there is more than one inventor. In addition to Alexander Graham Bell, there seems to be a parallel invention of the device by a fellow by the name of Elisha Gray. Why is he unknown? As often happens, the awarding of bragging rights turns into a race to the patent office.
Science historians call this phenomenon “multiples.”
The same creative insights seem to strike a number of inventors — often scattered across the globe — at the same time in history. Gladwell reminds us that the uncertainly of whom was the real originator makes our inclination to name a device after its “inventor” a dicey proposition at best:
We think we’re pinning medals on heroes. In fact, we’re pinning tails on donkeys.
This made me think of open source applications. Perhaps it’s fitting that we do not commonly know the single inventor of PHP technology — not because so many have built upon this foundation, but because the foundation itself was “in the air,” ready to be interpreted into code. I use PHP as an example, but any open source innovation will do to make my point.
Few would argue with the genius behind PHP. So why don’t we see multiples of web design? Aren’t good designs of sites “in the air” as well?
Singulars versus Multiples
Gladwell provides a hint to an answer when he states, “[a historian's observation] about scientific geniuses is clearly not true of artistic geniuses.” He goes on as follows:
A work of artistic genius is singular … Shakespeare owned Hamlet because he created him, as none other before or since could. Alexander Graham Bell owned the telephone only because his patent application landed on the examiner’s desk a few hours before Gray’s.
I find this distinction fascinating, because both types of genius are put into play in the creation of a great interactive experience. I love that one part of the process — the technology — uses the work of many to channel something that is clearly superior to others it replaces, yet is impossible to attribute to a single creator. Yet the part of the process that creates the most intimate parts of that application — the design — are invariably one person’s handiwork.
That is the true genius of web design, and it explains why a digital world will never make a web designer less “singular” than, say, a great playwright or composer.
Add comment May 12th, 2008
Sometimes I regret finding so many things interesting.
You see, I grew up in a part of the country that was extremely remote and sparsely populated, with little cultural diversity, in an era before cable, VCRs, and of course the internet. The majority of my teachers, bless them, were clearly there for the hunting and the summers off. In other words, intellectual stimulation was not a feature of my childhood.
Years later, after some lucky breaks and the support and guidance of some extraordinary people, I find myself doing work that is rewarding and stimulating. Especially stimulating. The internet has given me the freedom to explore everything that intrigues me.
All of this became apparent as I updated my StumbleUpon profile.
It’s as though a genie had poofed out of a lamp and given me the ability to visit the best web sites available on any subject I choose. And unlike the genie from One Thousand and One Nights, I’m given not three wishes but 127. There is the rub!
I started with major interests, and realized that I’d checked more categories than I’d left blank. As I dug deeper into each, I was stopped at 127 interests, with the depths of many categories left unplumbed. The word cloud above shows the major selections only.
My first bosses were a pair of brilliant advertising entrepreneurs. One had a degree in history, the other, journalism. Together they showed me the power a person grounded in the Humanities could have in the business world.
They too were cultural omnivores.
I thought of them this evening as I ticked off the many areas of study I wished I had an entire lifetime to explore.
Tonight I might skip sleep. Again. I may just stay up and drink deeply from the well of StumbleUpon, a magical servant who feeds that little boy whose thirst for knowledge insists on being quenched.
Add comment May 10th, 2008
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