Design of an Open Social Interaction Network: Human needs

After I posted some of my observations about flaws in web 2.0, I received a lot of positive and smart reactions. Becoming a bit overconfident I suggested that we might be able to aid future service design by exploring with more people how to move on to the next level of social interaction. I called them Open Social Interaction Networks (for lack of a better name, any takers?) where the value for the user is central in design, not the value of the network which has been the most important monetizing scheme in almost all current social networks such as Facebook or MySpace.

Since I asked for it I might as well start up the discussion by looking at perhaps the most important aspect of such services, the needs of the people using them. Rolf Skyberg wrote a really excellent presentation on this and took Maslov’s Hierarchy of needs as the basis to explain, that the market puts safety, prosperity and socialisation first.

I would like to look at it from another perspective and see what we can distill when we look at the behavior now on the Internet. It occured to me that there are many opposing beliefs. Some feels the social network is defined by the value and size of the network, while others looks more at quality. Some want their interaction to be public and stretched to the limit of what a human could possibly cope with (See Robert Scoble wanting to handle more than 5000 Twitter and 5000 Facebook relations. That is pretty amazing to me), while others will only be interested in a few qualitative friends. Some feel the network is the value, but it lacks ways to leverage it, others think that separating content form people will do the trick. There are people out there creating content like crazy, while others only consume it. Some want to gain celebrity status while others like being anonymous.

Lets see where this gets us. If I would draw two axes with a few of these parameters and look at what seems to be important to the user, I get:

I’m not in any way pretending to be complete, but it does provide some insight in that people will act differently under different circumstances and in different communities. We might aim to support just one type of interaction in a specific community, and design the possible interactions only for that specific community. But, as we are looking at an improvement for web 2.0, we would also need to look at the boundaries and unification of these interactions. It would need open networks and possibilities to use them privately as well as public.

For me, the following items might be important to a user (not complete I am sure!):

1. The user would need excellent and easy to use controls to set privacy in a contextual manner. In one occasion he might not want anyone else to know about his interaction with another person, in another he might want to let the whole world know about it. Same thing goes for a user profile. I don’t just mean the Facebook profile we have carefully constructed to be better than reality, but instead a user profile is defined by his interaction with others. Being able to switch between private and public interaction, thus forming both a private and public profile would be a powerful tool.
2. In some occasions the user might find simple interaction forms sufficient enough, while in others he might want to use more complex forms of interaction. Two things seem important here. The user can have access to all forms of communication without a “Geekness”factor. So Mobile Internet as an example will only do, if the user experience and handling are simple and intuitive enough to match some of the on-line interfaces available to me. And second, communication and interaction are basic services for all. So no forced Twitter account on the Twitter network, but a Twitter-like service across any network I chose to use.
3. There would be a need to be able to organise my friends and family, and distant or unknown relations into different categories. Again, simplicity is the key here. Allowing smart categorization of the people in my network will help me focus my energy on the type of interaction I want. I personally would like to get rid of the current practice of “asking permission to be your friend” It is awkward and defaults to limit my possibilities to interact. I’d trade it with better blocking options for abuse.
4. We would also need new ways to connect, explore and find information and people across many different networks. this calls for OpenID being implemented across the networks. While we might use conventional browsing and searching techniques for that, I am personally intrigued by the work of Jonathan Harris, who has done some amazing projects which allow total new ways of organising and exploring people and information on the Internet.
5. We need some sort of decentralization of services and social networks in order to be able to leverage them all as a user. this will also ensure the value is user centric, not network centric. One way of dealing with that might be to integrate services into our web browser. This immediately makes the Internet evolve around me, instead of me having to go to all these different portal destinations. DISCLAIMER HERE: I am involved in a (currently stealth) project that integrates cool interaction services into your web browser (more on that some other time) so I am positively biased to such solutions. Current integration on the web (take NetVibes or Facebook as examples) is not sufficient yet as they are essentially destination based making the destination more important than myself.
6. If my profile is created by interaction with others, then using it contextually during my explorations could be a powerful functionality. User controlled of course, but I might be interested in locating people, content or even advertisements while exploring the world based upon my current actions and previous interactions. It seems to me this would be a better matching factor than for example tagging or previous surfing behavior only.

Got to stop here as the story is becoming too long already. Let’s hear what you have to say on this. More to come in the next weeks on supporting such needs with tools and technology, and possible monetizing schemes.

The flaws in web 2.0 and how to correct them part 2

After I wrote my earlier post called “The flaws in web 2.0 and how to correct them” I was surprised by the really positive replies and also the quality of the discussion that seems to have been triggered by it. There are some really smart people thinking and writing about the current state of web 2.0. Let me provide a quick summary of the responses and then proceed into deepening this discussion.

Chris Clark told me I was missing the point as he correctly points out that web 2.0 isn’t just about Facebook or MySpace. Web 2.0 has provided companies a way to have meaningful discussions with their customers leveraging technologies such as Wiki’s, Blogs. He also mentioned that user generated content is becoming to rival the quality of in house productions.  Chris, you are right of course. I focused in my post on the user perspective, but if you turn it around and look at a company’s perspective, then things have definitely become better.

Kirill Bolgarov agreed with most of the things I said and states that “those who rule the party of social networking are smart enough to somehow force the evolution of the networks into something more like what you have described..”. Kirill, I believe that these changes will evolve from users turning away from closed networks to more open networks, and by service creators that will ultimately understand what’s really important

Jordan Mitchell states that “my sentiment is that the problem is that social networking really ought to be a feature of the Web rather than a destination”. He also feels that the people web should be a different layer from the content web. Jordan, I like that thought. It enforces openness, instead of walled garden social networks.

Rian agrees with me on my statement that we aren’t getting as much value out of a social network but has a very different approach on why that is the case. He argues that the network is the need, but that current user experiences doesn’t allow them to tap the full potential of their networks. He suggests that in an open social network the trick becomes how to identify the most important actors and tap into the benefits related to them. He writes smart things, check out his earlier posts on the matter. Rian, although I agree with your analysis that it would be beneficial to let users become more aware of relationships in order to tap into the useful resources, I also feel that it still addresses only one aspect of the equation, me finding other interesting people. But true interaction is not just about me finding things, it is also about me giving something valuable to the network. Professionally I might be interested to find many smart people that think about changing web 2.0 into something better, and interact with them (as we do now!).  At home I will be more interested in interaction with my friends and family, a much smaller group of people. No need here to have a large network, just simple and elegant ways to be interacting with them across all the possibilities on the web.

Rolf Skyberg wrote an excellent post in reply to mine called “Trancending my human limitations through the web“. He not only wrote very nice things about my blog (thank you!), but also stresses the point that humans love to interact. Internet supports that with things like relative permanence, instant perception and near-boundless audiences. But social networks suck at it. Why? Rolf states it’s money. If you give a product away for free there is always a monetizing scheme which provides the companies with a strong incentive to build a closed large network. The solution for the user of course lies in a large OPEN network. Rolf, I agree with you on this. It is precisely for this reason I find the possible Microsoft investment in Facebook a very risky strategy. it will increase ad pressure on the user, and they won’t like it a bit.

So how about taking this discussion one step further? Can we use the positive energy and smart thinking around us to draw up a high level design of a new web?  I’d rather not call it web 3.0 (tacky right?).  It would be an interesting experiment to see if we can come up with some great idea’s that might help service creators to develop services that are adding true value to the user. We would need to consider human needs first, then go into the ways of supporting those needs using tools and technologies. But we also should be thinking about  monetizing it in such a way that the user and the service creator and advertiser benefit from it (there is no such thing as a free lunch right?).  If there is enough need for it I would suggest we all start writing some articles about it the coming weeks. Let’s see what happens with it. I will give it a go and try to write a post on it once a week.  Now all we need is a catchy title, something that will inspire us to write. How about “Design of an Open Social Interaction Network”? I’m open to better alternatives, post them in the comments section and we can see if we can improve on this.

Good luck, and let’s surprise each other with some excellent posts on the “Design of an Open Social Interaction Network”. Hope some of you out there like this experiment and join in.

Internet doesn’t evolve around you (part 2)

I was a little in a hurry in my previous post. In this post I argue that, despite what we are meant to believe, the Internet does not evolve around you. Perhaps services like Facebook, MySpace, but also the latest in social networks pagii give the user the feeling that he or she is the one that it is all about. Each of these services rely on you setting up and sharing a personal profile, the value for the company of course being the network that evolves. But where is the true value for me as a user?

Yes, I have all these cool applications and extensions to set up a great profile. These extensions allow met to do things I can’t do by myself (no publishing talent). So great effort goes in to the design of my profile, and then the setting up and inviting of as many friends as possible. There are many great tools out there to make a great profile (note my earlier post on rock you for example).
Notice that I haven’t mentioned any true value that I have gotten from all these efforts. As it turns out, the value I receive back from these services is relatively low. My friends seem to put more effort in the design of their profiles than in true interaction. Sometimes having interaction with a previously unknown person might provide some satisfaction, but I tend to measure and value these services on the interaction with people I know really well, and we seem to interact much more using 1-1 communications services like physical get togethers, mobile calls , SMS, e-mail, IM, Skype (maybe I have the wrong type of friends?).

Right now, social networks are much more publishing than interaction tools. There is nothing wrong with that, on the contrary. Looking at the growth of the number of users in such applications it really fills in a need for millions of people. But, at the same time, relative few of the publishers out there really create new content. Most use the basics to get started, and then quickly become readers, instead of publishers, turning the Internet into a very large TV space. Wasn’t that a pre-web 2.0 service, broadcast?

I think that when all of the dust of web 2.0 settles we might see some new initiatives rise that will help all those millions of publishers out there to start interacting with all sorts of methods. not justy publishing, but interacting. Sharing their lives, important happenings, emotions, conversations. mabe there are already a few out there, can you point them out?

I saw a nice quote this morning on Rolf Skyberg his site.

“Unfortunately, Facebook has wandered into familiar territory of social networking by imagining (hoping) that the value is in the network, and not what you get out of the network. This is an easy mistake to make, because nobody wants to believe that their tool is only something you use to get something else done.” For the rest of this article by Rolf look at:

http://rolfskyberg.wordpress.com/2007/08/07/it-aint-all-that-facebook-might-have-started-a-firestorm/

The company that understands that best will ensure that what you get out of the network is just as important as what you put into it. Call it web 3.0, I would call it true interaction.

A new social networking generation rises

Have you ever noticed how fast young children pick up new trends on the Internet at elementary school? It is amazing really. My children come back from school and as soon as they get the chance they fire up the Internet. The boys are mostly into different computer games, my daughter likes MSN better than games.

Children adapt new technologies much faster than our generation does anyways. My 5 year old could already at the age of 4 start the computer, go to the Internet, turn on some video-clips and then surf to a game site where he plays different games. He knows all about the sites and the way they work by looking at his older brothers. My 7 and 8 year old sons however use a different strategy. Rather than searching for new sites on the Internet, they pick up new trends from school (preferably from the older children). They go from game to game. Half a year or so www.runescape.com was their favorite, then they moved over to www.pokemoncrater.com and more of such games. A game will be popular instantly, but can be out of their favorite list in no time too. They usually don’t know exactly what the web address of the game is (how do you write runescape dad?), but they find it easily. Within minutes they are signed on, and a few days later the game “slang” hits their conversations. My wife and I don’t have a clue what they are talking about, but all the kids at school do.

One interesting aspect about it is the way they deal with their game profiles. Unlike us grownups, they tend to share their accounts with their best friends. The reason for this is that there is simply more game time spent on the profile by more children, thus greatly increasing the level of play and the game powers they posses. They do not feel the urge to protect their privacy. You might think it is simply due to naivety and age, but I think that this is not the case.

These children have found ways to have a joint social interaction that benefits the group as a whole. They put more trust in their true friends and share more with them than we would. I see the same tendencies on the way the children use MSN or their mobile phones (have you ever seen 5-10 children together sharing background pictures on their mobiles using bluetooth?) . For this reason I think this generation will have a much more complete and beneficial social interaction on the Internet than we a grownups now will ever have in Facebook or any of the other social networks. In some ways less private, but at the same time much more connected, more about sharing experiences, and definitely more interactive. Advertisers and brand marketeers beware! A new social networking generation has been born.

The myth of social networks?

Just saw a nice article by Carl Mangold in which he proposes to drop the term social network as research shows that the main reasons for users to generate content are fame and fun. Furthermore there are only few of the participants in such networks that actually produce content themselves (sorry, the post is in Dutch, but the accompanying graphics are in English). So where is the social aspect then.

I agree with Carl on his analysis but I would add to it that the effects described are probably influenced by culture. I think that American users, more than European users, generate user content for publishing reasons (fame and fun). I think that European users on Facebook, Myspace, and also European portals with similar functionality will in general use it more often to get in touch with friends they know in the physical world as well (so more sharing going on here). Nevertheless, publishing for fame is an important factor that drives a lot of these portals.

I think that for “real” friends sharing SMS, IM and e-mail are more popular than services like Facebook or MySpace. Why? Well, my guess would be that sharing using SMS, IM or e-mail is just quicker and easier to do. Simple interfaces, direct sharing possibilities and in most cases a direct response from the friend you are sharing with. Sharing is more personal, it isn’t a public interaction the way publishing is. It is an important social interaction though. The service that will support sharing between friends best might just be able to attack the more conventional methods used. What do you think?