Source©

An Introduction to Social Software

Piers Young, 2005

Source©

The next hour or so

Part 1: Scene setting What this talk is not, what’s ‘social’ software?

Part 2: Social Software Demonstrations Diving in and showing you some useful tools.

Part 3: Possible Uses of Social Software Personal use Organisational/Group use External use

Part 4: Wrap up, where next, and questions.

Source©

I: Scene Setting

Source©

This talk is not …

Business is catching on to social software “The teenagers are on to

something” – March 2004 “Blogs will change your business”

– May 2005 Adoption by Fortune 500’s

(Source: ensight.org)

This talk is not about their approaches to social software.

Source©

What this talk is

An introduction to social software to help you decide whether these tools could be useful for: you your group(s) your organisation

A quick overview to try to “demystify” some of these tools.

Source©

Background: Why ‘Social’ Software?

How we ought to communicate is easily confused with how we do communicate (Source: Rob Cross)

Source©

Problem #1: Channel Denial

Accuracy is sacrificed for Expediency by 80% of people Tom Allen, MIT: Engineers got their knowledge from

sources that are the easiest and most familiar to them, not the ones that were most reliable or accurate

Who uses portals? Who buys them? What behaviours do they assume? What is useful to you?

Top-down views of workplace relations have “information opportunity costs.”

Source©

Quick Experiment

How well can you concentrate on the task at hand? Count the number of passes the WHITE team makes IGNORE the black team – they’re distracting Most people can’t manage it!

Source©

Problem #2: Inattentional Blindness

Focus necessarily narrows what you pay attention to How do you focus on what you need to do and spot the

gorilla? How do you focus on your day-to-day job and spot new

opportunities? How can an organisation be efficient and innovative?

Focus (efficiency, structure, et al.) has an “information opportunity cost”.

Whole group gets a better result and spots the gorilla

Source©

Social Software: Some Generalisations

So far so theoretical Pragmatic rather than idealised ‘Conversational’ rather than ‘Authoritative’ Driven by personal communication needs ‘Biological/Bottom-Up’ rather than ‘Mechanical/Top-Down’ ‘Open’ rather than ‘closed’

Social Software = Silver Bullet!!

Source©

II: Social Software Demonstrations

(Blogs, Wikis, RSS, Social Bookmarks)

Source©

Demonstrations

Yes, the names are a little silly Blogs are not the only fruit:

RSS Social Bookmarks Blogs Wikis Presence tools

And a lot of them are free.

Source©

Email vs Web Pages

Easy to make sure right people write it?

Easy to make sure right people read it?

Email

Web Pages

Social Software

Source©

Really Simple Syndication (RSS)

Syndication and Aggregation Example: Bloglines Subscribe on the orange

button And easily unsubscribe. To any enabled page Let the web come to you

“I didn’t realise the web was this intelligent”

– Michael Smets

Jargon: Feeds

Source©

Social Bookmarks

Example: CiteULike.org Classify documents how you want See who else has found it interesting See what else they’ve found Are they a good channel?? If yes, then RSS.

Example: del.icio.us “tagging”

Source©

Weblogs (Blogs)

Broad range of topics Common ground:

“Public Email” “Diary” Format Voiced Easy

Blog “Grammar”: Posts and Links Comments and Trackbacks RSS Positioning

(Blogroll, About me, Contact, Colophon)

Source©

Wikis

Example: Wikipedia Web pages editable by

anybody with the right permissions

Lots of users – one document

“Wisdom of Crowds” and consensus

… See a page you want to keep track of? RSS

Source©

Presence

People don’t always work in the same office Quick communications without “papertrail” Not firing off messages into the void Instant messaging …

Source©

Source©

III: Social Software and the Organisation

Source©

Social Software and the Organisation

Personal Use Group and Organisational Use External Use

Source©

Social Software: Personal Use

How you use any of these tools is up to you If they don’t help you do what you do, don’t use them.

Some possible options: Managing news (RSS) Testing your ideas, research notebook (private/public blogs,

wikis) Relationships (blogs) & Conversations (blogs, presence) Finding interesting information (Social Bookmarks, blogs,

RSS) “Optimal Unfamiliarity”

Source©

Social Software: Group/Organisational Use (Internal)

Possibles: Tracking and sharing interesting news that the group should

know about (rss, blogs, social bookmarks) Project Logs (blogs) Organising conferences (wikis) Collaborative documents (wikis) Optimise number of people enagaging in important issues …

Source©

Social Software: Group/Organisational Use (External)

Still being worked out, but some emerging trends: “Marketing”

Conversations and engagement with Customers

“Creative Consumers” Customers as frontline innovators

Group Blogs, Wikis etc being mixed and matched to help but to help a broader initiative

Source©

Markets as Conversations (1)

38. Human communities are based on discourse — on human speech about human concerns.

39. The community of discourse is the market.

40. Companies that do not belong to a community of discourse will die”

- The Cluetrain Manifesto

Source©

Markets as Conversations (2)

A = Your company or organisation’s conversations B = The outside world x delineates your “corporate membrane” y delineates your market AIM: to get A as close to possible to B SOLUTION: has something to do with x

Source:

Hugh Macleod

Source©

Creative Consumers

“How does innovation happen? The familiar story involves boffins in academic institutes and R&D labs … [Less well known] is the fact that Bell, an American bicycle-helmet maker, has collected hundreds of ideas for new products from its customers, and is putting several of them into production. Or that Electronic Arts (EA), a maker of computer games, ships programming tools to its customers, posts their modifications online and works their creations into new games. And so on. Not only is the customer king: now he is market-research head, R&D chief and product-development manager, too.”

- Source: The Economist

Source©

IV. Wrap up, where next, and questions

Source©

Wrap up

Structure/Efficiency vs Resilience/Innovation Personal Information strategies (how you actually

communicate) drives group results. Social software, you and the organisation

Not just “blogs” Internal vs External Conversations vs Documents Manage conversations not content Better engaged staff

Not a silver bullet, but very hard to spot the gorilla without it

Source©

Where next

If you want to know more about any of these tools, I’m happy to take you through them & help set you up.

If it were up to me: Familiarise people with RSS – get them using it as a priority Find some interested people, and trial run e.g. an internal wiki for

ORFG, or a group blog. Small steps Don’t authorise, enable IT Support vs IT control

BUT: it’s up to you too – what helps you do your job? And if you’re concerned that this “bottom-up” approach is a

ramshackle, chaotic, risky, scattergun approach to running anything …

Source©

Quick Experiment #2

Try clapping in time. Thanks … But who told you which beat to clap to?

Source©

Questions