Social media hangover - why can't we all just be friends?

Just like in the 60's (but I suspect we had less fun this time around), social media excess has inevitably led to social media disillusionment.

As all technical wonders, it started with the delight of seeing how many people want to be your friend, some of whom you actually know. There was also the added titillation of all those MySpace friend requests from users with names like Lola, Estelle and Nichole.

Of course it all had to end in tears, as we found that our LinkedIn friends were only using us to get a new job, that our Facebook friends were only using us prove that they were still more popular than us and that our MySpace friends charged for their services.

Or in kindergarten terms, we have gone from wandering all over the playground asking everyone else, "will you be my friend" to the pre-emptive exclusion of sitting in the corner and declaring "you're not my friend" to all comers.

The behavior that constitutes friendship varies dramatically based on context. My favorite example was when my sister was in 2nd grade and arrived home announcing that she had a new boyfriend. When I asked her how she knew, she replied "he's my boyfriend because he threw a pear at me on the way home."

Every context has different rules for being "friends" - much of the fun of social media is that we are getting to live through a global learning process around the rules that apply to friendship in a variety of new communication environments. As Rob La Gesse points out here,

This goes back to "context" - something these social network sites are not managing very well. I should be able to check my levels of interest in various aspects of soccer (player, coach, parent, investor, etc) and communications and friend requests should take this information into account when handling requests.

ps Thanks to Shel Israel for kicking off this train of thought with a question he posted on Facebook here.

Democratization of development

Shel Israel has a good post in which he interviews Chris Shipley of Demo fame on the significance of social media and Web 2.0. She says:

I do think that the rapid and broad dissipation of power/influence/control
that is at the core of social media (Web 2.0?) is as fundamental a shift as from
mainframe to mini and mini to PC. When power moves from central
control out to the edges, things change dramatically and forever. This
Genie isn't going back into the bottle. Full article here

This puts a pretty profound spin on the effect these technologies can have on how applications are developed in the enterprise. If Enterprise Web 2.0 tools allow more business-focused developers to be more effective in building business apps, IT can start to have a much more decisive effect on the business.

I would add to Chris Shipley's comment two additional predictions about how collaboration and Web 2.0 will drive business change:

1. Collaboration technologies will improve the developer/user dialogue to produce a better understanding of user requirements
2. Lightweight prototyping tools will enable more iterative development to product products that better meet business needs.

ps I got a chuckle out of this Web 2.0 love letter - who would have thought that all these wacky company names could be turned to such good use!?

Ten Ways to Kick-Start a User Community – how ActiveGrid boosted postings by 10 times in five months

Every software vendor dreams of having a vibrant user community to provide input, buzz and maybe even someday help make money! When I joined ActiveGrid six months ago, the user community on SourceForge was dead, with one to two posting per day. Now the community has over 15 posts a day, a more than ten-fold increase in less than six months.

This describes the steps we took to go from zero to somebody in the enterprise tools forum world. ActiveGrid is a visual tool for building web apps, sort of an MS Access for the Web. Our success as a tool is closely tied to the strength of our community.

1. Crown a community czar

Taking care of the community had been an ad hoc activity at ActiveGrid. As usual, whenever something is everybody’s job, it ends up at the end of everybody’s todo list.

The most important step we took to kick-start our community was to assign a full-time employee to manage the health and well-being of the community. The skills required for success include good technical and writing abilities combined with a genuine interest in open source communities.

2. Put all your eggs in one basket and watch that basket!

For historical reasons, ActiveGrid had several different forums. There was even an abandoned community started by an ActiveGrid fan. It was thriving, but only because spammers had loaded all the forums with postings that were off topic to say the least. It took over a month to get all the forum traffic funneled into just one community board.

3. Use best of breed forum tools

We found that the ActiveGrid SourceForge forums were hard to navigate and didn’t allow attachments. Our community czar moved the community to Drupal and rehosted it at dev.activegrid.com. The new Drupal site helped make it easier to post content, helping to drive a flood of new posts. In addition, the Drupal forum software handles attachments and graphics, making it much more valuable for sharing information.

4. Connect with your base

The first thing our community czar did was to reach out to the people who were actively posting (even though many of their postings had to do with how un-loved they were feeling). He contacted them directly through email and built personal relationships with what we called the “Fab 4” – the top 4 posters who became the foundation for the rebirth of our community. One important lesson is that a small core of active posters is the soul of a healthy community.

5. Turn off the spin

At the risk of sounding cluetrain manifesto-ish, we made an early decision to err on the side of transparency in communicating with our community. We admitted that we had been lax in our support of the community and asked for their help. We also kept the community strictly separate from the commercial side of the house. Using community to flog commercial ideas will go nowhere. It’s like the joke about why you shouldn’t teach a pig to whistle – it doesn’t work and it annoys the pig.

6. Coddle early adopters

In a new community, one active poster is worth 1,000 lurkers. Given this, anything you can do to help incubate people with the gift of gab is worthwhile. We gave away ipods, bought lunches, but most importantly built personal relationships with our community champions.

7. Foster healthy competition

Each posting at dev.activegrid.com earns the poster points, that aren’t redeemable in any way except in our rankings. Anyone in the community who wants to be seen by their peers as an ActiveGrid expert has to work pretty hard just to stay at the top of the rankings.

8. Find work for your users

Many of the posters in the ActiveGrid community are consultants. Every chance we get, we put our corporate customers in touch with community experts. This is classic win-win – our customers get their jobs done and our community champions have even more reasons to be enthusiastic about our products.

9. Take your lumps

Not all postings are positive. Not all community members are polite. Having a community manager actively working to address issues as they arise has proven the most effective way of keeping the overall tone of the community constructive.

10. Explore the boundaries

We are now at the fun stage in working with the community, where we are exploring the boundaries of what you can do with a passionate and committed group of people, all of whom are focused on helping you deliver a great product to market.

For example, the community has provided invaluable beta testing on our last three releases. Top community members have also had one-on-one meetings with our engineering team to help us engineer our next generation product. On the business side, we have asked the community for help in devising our pricing and licensing.

We have not yet fully tapped the potential of the community, but have absolutely turned the community into a powerful driver of momentum. It has been extraordinary how quickly the gains in the community have been reflected by increased business activity and enthusiasm among our commercial customers. Success is infectious!