Respond - and respond fast - or die

Jeff Jarvis writes about Steve Jobs decision to give cash back (well, $100 to spend with Apple) to i-rate i-phone buyers when they heard he'd slashed the price of the phone-that-you-must-own.

The early adopters felt hard done by.

In the past Apple would have made its 'go-for-bulk' price cut with adding to the customer-numbers heap in mind.

It would take a considerable time (and quite possibly a serious slump in early adopters for the next product) before the company would discover how much it had annoyed its most fervent advocates (and you'll appreciate the huge damage beating up on your advocates can do).

Now Jobs hears the blogging buzz, the forum feedback, moments after he makes the announcement. The credit cash back must go hand in hand.

Jeff is right to point out that speed is the essential difference. I think of the recent HSBC case re overdraft charges for students and the facebook group that self-formed at lightning speed.

Students were always able to organise to protest. Now they can do it in an instant.
Critically, they now have a way of reaching people with a shared interest or purpose immediately, too.

Most of the students who were impacted by the HSBC decision had left university and were dispersed. Facebook meant they could be reassembled.

There’s a story about Noel Edmunds returning to a stint on radio recently. He was told the most important screen to watch was the one showing text messages from listeners.
In seconds the first one came in: “Get that beardy tw*t off the radio!”.
He commented it used to take a week to get feedback like that, in listeners letters. Now it’s immediate.

That whole viral thing

Anyone who has read the Tipping Point will recall how there's a frightening permissive viral effect to suicide.

There are many recorded cases of suicides coming in batches - and in particular areas. Several in one school, endemic in some polynesian societies etc, surges after the widely publcised suicide of a famous person.

Staggering to think that the most important of all decisions in our lives (or deaths) are so easily 'tipped' by the choices of others around us.

My parents once told me they got married, because all their friends seemed to be getting married too (how romantic...)

I'm pretty convinced divorce may be viral, too. If one of your circle of friends succumbs, the chances increase for others in that group.

Essentially the same is true in each of these examples:
Permission has been granted for this to be an acceptable course of action/conduct/behaviour in your particular community (or shared interest group).

And if such permission-based influence can act so virally in such very important parts of our lives it follows (surely) that this must have real power in driving our behaviour in other community contexts. Imagine the potential marketing power, for example.

Take facebook (again!?) if one of your friends leaves a group do you stop to consider whether or not you should? Do you think, hmm maybe I'm in too many groups and I should have a bit of a cull?
The reverse is true of course. See a friend join a group and if it meets your interests you are in like flyn!

In this context some people hold more viral sway than others. People who have lots of friends and do lots of things on facebook have more influence.

And I'd contend the same is true in real life. It's not necessarily the most dominant person (ie, most looked up to, the leader, the coolest) in a community who has the most power to effect change. It's more likely to be that active person with multiple light social touches. These people need persuading - then the rest will feel they have permission to change.

This is a lesson learned by the likes of Xtract in Finland and captured in their concept of the alpha user.

It's a lesson anyone considering social media has to learn, too.

Facebook: Open to persuasion?

Both Scott Karp and Badger Gravling have posted about Facebook's plans to make your profile searchable outside of facebook (eg by google) in recent days.

Scott's concern is that facebook has started opening up its network without consulting with that network - and even went so far as to test and implement without a nod to their nodes!
Scott points out that the default mode is to make your (it has to be said, very limited) profile available to search engines.

Personally, I don't have a problem with making my node on the facebook network also a node on the wider network of the internet. But then, you'd expect me to say that, wouldn't you?
I expect it to be another way my connections with interesting people and thoughts will be amplified - with all the emerging value that entails.

That said, I do understand why some people would NOT want to be involved in that widening. It's clear from recently successful networks that control over how closed or open your personal group within a network is, is very valuable to many. Think Cyworld (Korea), think LinkedIn, and (usually) think Facebook.

Seems to me facebook is scrabbling around trying to work out how to monetise its huge community (note this is a community, or series of communities, NOT an audience). Increasing the potential traffic and page impressions (a result of opening up to search engines) is a very standard interruptive advertising response.

It's attempting to gauge success in terms of Sarnoff's Law: ie The more viewers, the greater the value.

But it's a serious under-estimation of the true (Reed's Law) value being created in the facebook network.

Examples such as the student group who turned over HSBC give a pointer to the value on offer - if only facebook could tap it.

I had the pleasure of dinner with Alan Moore (co-author Communities Dominate Brands, and the man who coined the term 'engagement marketing') last night.

He had just returned from time spent working with Xtract in Helsinki. And it occurred to me that the combination of facebook, Alan and Xtract could prove very powerful.

A quick snapshot of how great the potential, is demonstrated by Robert Scoble's 5000-strong facebook group and explained by him in this video. (watch here).

An aside: Robert's video is pitched as exclusive content available only to his facebook friends - yet when I add it to my vodpod (see left navigation) it seems that content is made freely available outside of the facebook wall!).

So I took a look on Facebook to see how I might go about contacting the right person to get the conversation going.

I ended up having to pretend I wanted to place an advert in order to be able to send any kind of message to HQ at all!

Seems like facebook values its privacy...



If anyone has any clue as to how to crack the 'contact a human being at facebook' code, please do share.

Self-forming community beats the banks

So an adhoc, self-forming community of shared interest/purpose has won its battle with banking giant HSBC: HSBC makes U-turn after student facebook protest
It's a great example of the rapid growth of actual, real value that's possible when the exponential of Reed's Law is let loose. 5000 supporters joined the facebook group protesting about new charges within days. They weren't just doing it to talk ( in a classical social network way). They were out to create value for themselves.
The real value concerned is £144 a year per graduate. Now they won't have to pay. Any charges already paid are being paid back, too.
HSBC has just been taught a tough lesson. It's a networked world. Anger a mob of students and all students will soon get the message that you aren't a bank to sign up with.
This was always so - it's the break-neck speed at which this happens that are startling - and it is this which is a direct result of digital communities.
The question from a publisher's perspective is - how the hell do we get our cut of the value from this.
HSBC loses cash, students gain it. Where's the cash for facebook?
Well, of course it would be possible for a traditional bit of faux engagement (ie, in context, related banner ads from rival banks looking to encourage people to jump ship). But there's growing evidence that we're switching off even to these. They feel forced, they feel mechanistic - and they always carry the risk of revealing just how little they 'know' about the context they are related to (examples like this are always a possibility).
The clever response for HSBC now (and perhaps facebook could negotiate a facilitator fee) would be to galvanize the protestors with some good old two-way conversation to repurpose this adhoc group (which would likely change with some leaving, some joining as a result) to co-create the next student bank accounts.
This is rather more than focus groups on steroids. If they worked with (for!) their communities of shared interest (ie young students, mature students, graduate students, overseas students, married students, parent students) they might be able to create new products (accounts) to attract many, many more to their brand.
It's just the simple lesson of allowing the community to take charge.

See also: The Great Graduate Rip-Off

What makes a great community?

Please join in trying to create a workable definition of what makes a great community. Post your thoughts and I'll gradually integrate them into the main body of this article (and of course your contributions will remain listed in the posts attached).

Your examples - with descriptions of what makes them so good - are also very welcome.

Here's some to get us going:

Great communities:

• Put the community first, understand that the community is king.
• Encourage self-forming, adhoc, non-directed groups of shared interest/purpose
• Apply Elinor Ostrom’s eight design properties for stable Common Pool Resource systems (recognizing the crucial role of ratings/reputation) (http://fasterfuture.blogspot.com/2007/05/why-ratings-and-reputation-are-so-vital.html)
• Activate co-creation of value (content, services, shared tools [widgets/apps] and products)
• Enable constant real-time connection (synchronous communication).
• Treat people as converged individuals – buyers/sellers/designers/engineers/creators/marketers/employees/employers
• Make the technical barriers low.
• Enable discovery/introduction of people with shared interests/purpose
  
• Enable users/communities to set their own definitions of good, and how open or closed their network will be.
• Enable users to get into flow rather than focus (ie manage the risk of information overload).
• Put the individual user in control
• Understands the distinction between audience and community: Audiences consume content, communities primarily communicate with one another. Communities communicate with one another, audiences don’t.
• A community is a community because of the connections that form between its members.
  

Great examples:

Facebook is extremely easy to use, encourages (rewards) the use of true identities, offers levels of privacy in groups, networks and in peer-to-peer friendship groups. There is even a small element of ‘degrees’ of friendship. The newsfeed offers something of the flow needed to manage risk of information overload – and the realtime connectivity (especially when accessed and updated from your pervasive computer – your mobile!).

eBay offers a good example of converged user – buyer/seller/marketer/developer etc. And it applies Ostron’s design principles for Common Pool Resources.

Danah Boyd: (from Incantations for Muggles: The Role of Ubiquitous Web2.0 Technologies in Everyday lives) "If you want to understand the success of a social technology, you can't stare at the technology. You need to understand the social practices that make it flourish. Technologies succeed when they support what people already do, what they want to do, and what they're required to do. Technologies become ubiquitous when people stop thinking them as a technology and simply use them as a regular part of everyday life."

Over to you!