Me First - Stowe Boyd on IBM Connections
I reported yesterday that IBM is launching a social networking platform for enterprises. Today Stowe Boyd writes about the potential for missing the key shift in today's social networking systems: a focus on the individual rather than the work group.
The basic model of 90's era collaboration, a la Lotus Notes, is all about the group. Information was managed in group-based repositories, then passed around for review, or published to intranet portals via customized apps. Information era workflows where people are first and foremost occupiers of roles, not individuals, and the materials being created are more closely aligned with groups than individuals.
Web 2.0 social tools — largely — work around a different model. Social networks — explicit ones like MySpace and Facebook, or implicit ones in social media — are really organized around individuals and their networked self-expression. I am writing this blog post, and publishing it, personally. It is not the product of some workgroup. It is not an anonymous chunk of text on a corporate portal. My Facebook profile pulls traffic from my network of contacts, sources I find interesting, and the chance presence updates of my friends.
I very much agree with his concern and have found that the distinction between the work group and the individual in how a platform is organized can be the critical difference between success and failure in making these new peer-production communities work. A couple of data points to support this:
In early 2004 I was doing research on what happens when you shift from blogs to email in a learning program. I interviewed a Matt Kirschenbaum, a professor at the University of Maryland who found that course participation shot up when he swapped out email and replaced it for blogs. He said, “the blog allows them to see their ideas instantly published on the Web. Email is a closed world, a self-contained loop between the instructor and the other students. With the blog, the fourth wall is always open.” Matt's assessment that “the blog allows them to see their ideas instantly published on the web” is key.
- At our boot camp for the American Library Association, we decided to give each participating library a weblog (rather than use a group tool like a wiki or group blog). The librarians immediately figured out how to customize the look and feel of their blogs and quickly changed the graphics to represent their own distinctive identities.
Stowe Boyd goes on to explain how he would re-design Basecamp to make it more individual-centric:
* I would start with a profile of myself, since I am the center of my network. I would characterize my interests, history, job, whatever. This could include feeds, queries, and all manner of dynamic information, not just static text. I could tag myself, to make it easier for others to discover me.
* The buddylist is the center of the universe, so I would next start to link to those people and sources most important to me. Their traffic — flow of insights, recommendations, and presence — is the most important thing forming my world.
* And of course, I want to share my traffic with my network: links, recommendations, posts, presence. All my downstream buddies, those who want to read my traffic, can access it. But we don't need groups to do so.
* Instead of groups, we need groupings: tagging the elements of network traffic is sufficient. Sure, we still need access control, so that only those allowed to can see certain information, but I think that putting locks on the stuff flowing around is better than locking up the people in secure spaces.
* Of course, I am not just talking about the movies: people have to get work done, and to do so they collaborate, commmunicate, coordinate and so on. But the actual traffic that goes on to do so is really the same as everything else. I am working with specific individuals, and we talk, and push things around. We naturally think of ourselves in groups — departments, task forces, project teams — but the work is done by individuals communicating with each other.
We are about to launch our new learning network service, which will incorporate the design principles found in the social networking sites and adapt them to a business setting. It is useful to keep these things in mind as we work through our design. The primary node in the network is the individual profile/blog. One level up we have tagging so information can be aggregated according to topic. And one level up from that we have RSS feed collections. I hope this structure is going to satisfy the me-first requirements outlined here. When we are up, I will be scheduling demonstrations of the service, so you all can tell me what you think.
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